


What's in store for me, god only knows

by skullage



Category: Block B, Winner (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends With Benefits, Happy Ending, M/M, Miscommunication, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-07 04:10:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullage/pseuds/skullage
Summary: Jiho and Minho try to impress the hot tutor.





	1. everybody else is second best

Minho’s fifth semester at college starts the same way the last four had: Jiho beside him, scribbling in the margins of Minho’s notebook and cracking lame jokes about peasant uprisings in the Ming Dynasty. Minho is not going to admit Jiho still knows more than him about that, despite the fact that Minho is dual majoring in History and Music Studies, and Jiho is studying two music majors. He knows they were about grain. Or land rights. Or maybe they really were seizing the means of production.

“You’re a huge nerd,” Minho says, “and you’re not funny,” while Jiho continues to laugh at his own jokes. 

The classroom has started to fill up but the lecturer isn’t there yet, which gives Minho an excuse to pull out his phone and start playing for Jiho the track he was up until four am on the first day of classes composing, but as soon as they get to the chorus the door opens again and the most gorgeous-looking man Minho’s ever seen walks in. Minho doesn’t notice he’s dropped his phone between his and Jiho’s seats until Jiho nudges his arm a few times, because he’s too busy watching the man walk to the desk by the podium at the other side of the room, his footsteps muffled in the carpet and his profile in Minho’s eyeline, and take off his jacket. 

“What?” Minho asks after he finally tears his eyes away from the sight. 

“You dropped your phone.” Jiho pushes it into his hands. “What are you—oh.”

Minho can hear the change of tone in Jiho’s voice when he spots who Minho’s looking at. It’s a small lecture theatre and their seats are close enough to the front of the room that Minho can make out the shape of this guy’s lips and the way his glasses perch on his round cheeks, but maybe Jiho is taking in the cut of his shoulders, the flex of his arms as he rolls up his sleeves, the way his jeans cling to him. 

“Well,” Jiho says, and Minho can hear the interest in his voice; he knows what it sounds like because it’s been directed at him before, but fuck him, Minho saw this guy first.

“College rules,” Minho says, kicking at Jiho’s feet until he connects with something. “I saw him first.”

“First of all,” Jiho hisses, “none of those rules are real, and second—quit it—you conveniently forgot they existed two months ago when you tried to make out with Kyung on a dare. Rule Number Three: No Best Friends.” Minho doesn’t remind him that they broke that rule when they hooked up with each other last year, and how it hasn’t done them any harm, that, in fact, breaking that rule has made Jiho pretty happy for a good ten months now, and also, they’ve both broken Rule Number Five and hooked up with so many of each other’s exes since the dating pool of hot, available, queer men and hot, available women who don’t know they’re too good for Woo Jiho and Song Minho is so small, pitiful even, that it’s hard not to. He doesn’t remind Jiho of this because he had his eye on the lecturer as soon as he walked in the door, and Rule Number Six claims first dibs. “ _Third_ , he was a tutor last year for one of my performance courses, so I saw him first.”

Well, Minho thinks, fuck. The lecturer clears his throat and starts the slideshow. “Good morning everyone. Professor Kim isn’t here today, so I’ll be taking over the lecture.” Oh, so not a lecturer. Still, he has a calming influence and a deep voice that Minho is glad he’ll be listening to for an hour and half. “I’m Kang Seungyoon, I’m one of the tutors, you’ll probably see me in classes. I hope we can get to know each other well this term.”

Minho drops his voice to a whisper. “Okay, fine, those rules aren’t real.”

Jiho smirks his shark smirk and leans back in his chair. He could try being a little less smug, but Minho knows he never will. “I’ll get a date by the end of the day.”

“Yeah, hyung, I’m sure skinny dudes with unwashed hair who smell like baby powder are exactly his type.”

“More so than muscle junkies who can’t hear the difference between G and A major chords. I wish you luck, Song Minho.”

Minho rolls his eyes and turns back to the lecture, where he spends the next 85 minutes absorbed in the introduction to popular music from pre-1885 to the end of the Japanese occupation, and when it’s over and Jiho’s still taking down notes, Minho, who hasn’t taken notes since his first semester, slips down to the front where Seungyoon is packing up his laptop.

“Hi,” Minho says, putting on his brightest smile and ducking down to meet Seungyoon’s eyes until they both straighten up. “I haven’t had you for any of my classes, are you a new tutor?”

Seungyoon flashes a smile like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, like maybe doing his job is something to be shy about. “I started last year, but this is was my first lecture. I hope I didn’t bore you to death.”

“My mind might have wandered a little bit just listening to your voice, but no, not bored.” Minho lowers the intensity of his smile to something more coy, and Seungyoon’s eyebrows rise. Minho feels Jiho sidle up next to them and resists the urge to play dirty. “I’m Song Minho, it’s great to meet you.”

They exchange bows and then Seungyoon turns to Jiho with a smile that Jiho returns, one that would make Minho disheartened if he wasn’t so sure of his charm and ability to score.

“And it’s good to see you again,” Seungyoon says.

“Likewise,” Jiho says, then, “I was hoping we’d meet again, we never did go for that coffee.”

“Ah, yeah.” Seungyoon looks embarrassed, and laughs to cover it. “I hope you didn’t take that too personally. I’d make it up to you, but I have another class to get to in three minutes.” He pulls his satchel onto his shoulder, grabs his jacket, and starts walking towards the door while Jiho and Minho follow him. “We might see each other next week, depending on whether Professor Kim is available.” He says his goodbye and rushes out the door.

Jiho doesn’t meet Minho’s eyes as they round the corner and exit the building into the sunshine.

“He’s a little harder to get than I first anticipated,” Jiho says.

“Don’t be too down on yourself, hyung,” Minho says, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice, “there’s a whole semester ahead of us.”

—

He feels blissed out and sated in more ways than one, exhaling a stream of smoke while the nicotine calms the cravings. The sound of Jiho’s crappy laptop speakers blasting out Red Velvet is audible through the glass door to the balcony where Minho’s got his feet up on the table and the empty can of tomatoes he’s using as an ashtray balanced on his stomach for easy access. It’s become a ritual, his post-orgasm cigarette. Come to Jiho’s for the first part, stick around for the second. 

When he comes back in, Jiho’s still naked, and Minho still has a mountain of reading to do even though it’s only the first week, but he ignores it a little while longer just to lie in Jiho’s bed and use his thigh as a pillow while Jiho sets up a drama to watch. 

“I ordered pizza,” Jiho says, “extra cheese, beef, the crust you like.”

“You’re the best,” Minho says. It gives him an excuse to do nothing but watch crappy shows and eat pizza in Jiho’s bed and probably go another round until he absolutely has to get back to his dorm five hours before class starts so he can do his readings for two and sleep for three. “It’s first week and we’re already doing civil unrest in the Middle East. You’d think they’d save that for last to get people to show up in the last week.”

“Why do we even bother going to class if all the lectures are online?”

“Well, I don’t know about you but Seungyoon’s given me a new reason to show up to Critical Concepts In Popular Music.” Minho turns onto his back to look up at Jiho, at the point of his chin and curve of his jaw. 

Jiho gives him a look like he was thinking the same thing. “Okay,” Jiho says, “I’m not sleazy so—well, not that sleazy—so let’s not live out a romantic comedy by turning this into a competition only to have Seungyoon reject us both when he finds out about it, so. I say we both go for it, and if he picks you I’ll back down with my pride.”

“You don’t have any pride,” Minho says, laughing into the air, flinching away when Jiho goes to flick his forehead. 

“Watch your words, Song Minho,” Jiho says. 

“Oh sorry, no, you’re right. You do have pride. I got that confused with self-respect.”

Jiho pulls a pillow from behind his back and starts whacking Minho with it, and it should be painful enough that Minho stops laughing, but he can’t, he’s convulsing with it, gasping, tears rolling down his cheeks when Jiho grabs him and attempts to squeeze him to death. It’s the closest he’s felt to anyone in months, with Jiho’s arms and legs octopussed around him, and then the squeezing turns into kissing and Minho’s still laughing through it, light-headed with it, curving his body into Jiho’s even though it’s too soon, he can’t get hard for at least another half hour. Jiho doesn’t seem to want to do anything, though, because he’s knows, they’ve been fooling around long enough that he gets it, and been friends for even longer, their friendship like a string that’s wound its way through their lives in unquantifiable ways.

“Sorry, hyung,” Minho says, during a break in kissing, “but it was too easy.”

“Well, of course you would confuse pride and self-respect, you don’t even know what they are.”

Minho laughs again, because Jiho when he’s haughty is ridiculously cute and fun to rile up, but he’s laughing too, and it’s so easy being with him Minho finds it hard to picture wanting to be anywhere else. They have fun together, and there are no strings, just sex and friendship—like dating without the dating. It’s the best relationship Minho’s ever had.

They fool around until the pizza gets there and Minho opens the door because he’s the one with clothes on and by the time they’ve finished three a half pizzas between them they’re too bloated and greasy to have sex again, so Minho calls it a night. He doesn’t kiss Jiho goodbye, because that’s another rule they have, filed away under social etiquette for fucking your best friend on the sly, and all of those rules are unspoken. 

He doesn’t do his reading that night. Instead, as he’s walking across campus to the dorms, a tune forms in his head, lyrics on the tip of his tongue, and when he gets to his room he opens a new file and starts laying down a track.

—

“You look like shit,” Jiho says, when he shoulders his way through the classroom door that is really not built for people like them and carrying a box. 

Minho grunts, because he got two hours and forty five minutes worth of sleep that morning and still didn’t finish the track. “I started working on something new.”

Jiho takes a seat around the four desks pushed together into a shapeless mass, next to Minho where he can slap the back of his head, not hard enough to hurt. “Do you ever take a break?”

“Do you?” Minho rearranges his cap. Jiho looks refreshed, because sex does that to him, gives him a glow that’s always a lost cause to Minho when he spends hours in front of a computer screen instead of sleeping. 

Jiho shrugs and pulls out his phone, scrolling for a minute while Minho doodled in his notebook. “Those two YG trainees made it through to first round performances. They were top pick in their teams.”

“No shit? Wow.” Minho has to give it to them. They haven’t even debuted yet but already they’re on _Show Me The Money_ and done pretty well so far. “What are their names again?”

“Bobby and B.I. I haven’t been watching the show religiously but they’re pretty good.”

“We’re better though, right?” Minho flashes Jiho a smile that he hopes hides his jealousy.

“Yeah, Minho-yah,” Jiho says, sighing. “We’re the best.”

Their conversation is cut short when Seungyoon walks in with his glasses and his leather satchel and his tight jeans. Minho tries not to stare but he knows Jiho is doing the same thing next to him, watching his mouth when Seungyoon starts introducing the course outline, reading list, assessment schedule, and what the tutorials will be like. “Any questions before we start?”

“Not a question,” Jiho says, “but I brought kkultarae.” He stands up offers the box to Seungyoon, who takes one and thanks him, before he starts taking it around to the thirteen other people in the room, conveniently forgetting Minho until he sits back down again. Jiho slaps Minho’s hand away when he reaches for the box. “None for you,” he says, then breaks into a smile, and Minho curses under his breath and takes one anyway.

The rest of the tutorial passes without incident, Minho drifting off every other minute staring at Seungyoon, who keeps pinching more kkultarae, licking his fingers, talking with his mouth full like he hasn’t been properly socialised. Minho finds it all unbearably hot, zoning out enough that he startles when Seungyoon looks at him and says, “Minho, what do you think?”

“Uh,” Minho says, and looks down at the papers Seungyoon handed out at the beginning of the lesson. “Folk music was the original pop music. It was mostly to, uh. Tell stories about the times and warn people about bad shit that was happening. And there were plenty of ‘fuck you’s to the King.”

Seungyoon gives him a smile like he thinks Minho’s trying and turns to the rest of class. “And the role of nongak?”

“It was the backdrop to the labor, the rhythm of the work, and it was meant to include the whole village,” Jiho says. “All ture members were meant to take part in either nongak or a variety show.”

“That sounds like idols and variety shows today,” Seungyoon says, and Jiho laughs a little too hard.

“Tone it down,” Minho murmurs, once Seungyoon starts addressing the class again, getting up to write on the whiteboard, and Jiho pinches Minho’s side through his tank top.

“I’m dazzling him with my wits. You have no chance.” He sounds really sure of himself for someone who usually takes six months to realize anyone is into him.

“Really?” Minho leans back in his chair with his hands behind his head, showing off his muscles, and when Seungyoon scans the class his gaze rests a little too long on Minho. “I have muscle _and_ brains. Your turn.”

Jiho doesn’t try anything for the rest of the lesson except give Seungyoon a look as they file out of the room when the class is over, and laughs when Minho catches him.

“Come here, Jihohyung,” Minho says, a warning, and then Jiho starts backing away towards the stairwell, taking off when Minho stalks towards him with intent. His laughter rings out through the stairwell as Minho chases him down one, two, four flights of stairs and out into the sunshine, gasping for breath when Minho finally catches him and tackles him onto the grass. Minho doesn’t do anything, just crushes Jiho under his weight until eventually Jiho pushes him off and he rolls onto his back.

“You’re going to get slapped with a sexual harassment suit, hyung.”

“You know if I’m going down, I am definitely taking you with me.”

“That seems fair,” Minho says. It’s nice to lie there, letting the sun beat down on them until they’re sweating too much to justify being covered in grass, so they pick themselves up, and Jiho leads the way to the food court with his arm slung over Minho’s shoulder, chatting about his favorite pentatonic scale while Minho listens to the sound of his voice.


	2. the type of guy you call more than a friend

“Okay,” Minho says, settling back into the couch while Jiho sets up a line of shots next to his laptop. Four shots, because that’s all the shot-glasses he has. “Lay it on me.”

It’s probably a bad idea that they’re drinking. They’re going to drink too much, and fool around, and wake up next to each other, and probably regret it, or—worse, neither of them will regret it, and they’ll keep doing it. Minho will probably say something like, _You know we’re just friends, right? It’s just casual_ , and Jiho will make some joke about how all his first dates usually start or end with a dick in his mouth so he’s a little confused, to cover the feeling, that feeling he refuses to name, thrashing around in his chest like a trapped animal. 

“So, I’m not really watching it, but the premise of the show is that there’s a group of trainees—Seunghoon, Jinwoo, Yunhyeong, Donghyuk, Junhwe, Taehyun, Jinhwan, and the other two rappers, Bobby and B.I, and they’re all competing to be in an idol group. Six spots open.”

“Oh, but you’re not even really watching it.”

Jiho grins. “I have a good memory and understand how survival shows work. YG isn’t as original as he thinks.”

Jiho takes a swig of his beer before he presses play, and Minho takes a shot from the table. It’s almost a game Jiho plays with himself, a masochistic idiot game, counting the shots Minho takes and how each one brings him physically closer to Jiho. One shot usually warrants Minho grasping his thigh for a few seconds as if reminding Jiho I’m there, I’m real, don’t forget about me. A couple shots and Minho will settle closer to him if they’re on a couch, like now, or play with Jiho’s feet under the table. By five shots and whatever else he’s drinking he’s got his arm around Jiho’s shoulders, a hand on Jiho’s chest, and Jiho’s usually too gone to stop him if they’re in public. By the eight shot they’re either making out in the bathroom or already naked in Jiho’s bed. 

Jiho tries not to read anything into it. Minho is, at all times, touched starved to the point of kissing the hands of all the bartenders who serve him and challenging people to thigh wrestle. It’s always Minho’s idea to fuck around, but that doesn’t mean Jiho doesn’t encourage it, that he doesn’t buy the brand of soju Minho likes best, that he hasn’t been fucking around with random guys to practice for what Minho likes doing best, just so he’ll be good at it, just so Minho won’t get bored of him. 

The _Mix & Match_ theme song plays and the trainees flash up on screen, an array of hopeful faces and snapshots of their talent that aren’t enough to encompass who they are and what they have to offer. It’s like a platter of personalities that YG has to choose from, and Jiho’s glad he didn’t go through that process.

“Which one’s your favourite?” Minho asks.

“Bobby, probably. He’s really talented.”

Minho pushes his lips out in a pout. “I thought I was your favourite rapper.”

Jiho gives him a smile. “You’ll always be my most precious dongsaeng, Minho,” he says, and that seems to placate Minho’s insatiable need to be the most loved person in the room. “Bobby and B.I made it through the diss round,” Jiho says, and Minho looks impressed. At the same time Jiho’s cautiously pessimistic that Mnet would knock the YGE trainees out of the competition, or that they’re only keeping them around for the drama, he’s heard them rap, he can sense their potential. One of them could end up winning, as well as making it through the survival show they’re currently on.

“Oh, really. Have you been watching?”

Jiho shrugs. “Not religiously. Mnet is really pushing the everyone-hates-idols angle, but these two have done really well so far, and it’s not like anyone believes people care enough to hate them that much.”

“That could’ve been us,” Minho says, and Jiho notices the note of longing he’s sure Minho doesn’t mean for him to hear, “if we’d gone for it.” He staring off at the wall now. “If we went on it next season we could make names for ourselves.”

“We’re doing okay now,” Jiho says. It’s not like they’re wasting away in obscurity. They do shows, they get booked for gigs, they’ve collaborated with artists that have already signed with agencies. They just agreed not to do it for real just yet and focus on school instead.

“Jihoon should definitely be on there, he’d smoke everyone.” 

“He’s too busy with Block B, he wouldn’t have the time. But it would definitely give them more exposure.”

“He’d clean up,” Minho says with a laugh, and Jiho agrees. He can tell how much Minho wants to be successful, to be known, to be onstage, to be making music. It’s not like Jiho doesn’t have that same drive, but this is the best choice for them before they go rushing into anything. They can learn a lot at university and doing music on the side. It’s not like Jiho’s only living for the Thursday and Friday nights every other week when they can stand in front of a crowd with their amplified voices flooding the club, bodies pressed together and shouting their own lyrics back at them, because he likes both—performing and studying. Performing gives him a reason to keep going, but studying keeps him humble. He can live in both worlds.

The show plays on in front of him, but he keeps looking at Minho’s profile for a minute, until Minho turns to him, smiling a soft smile that sets Jiho’s heart racing.

—

As he’s walking across campus he sees a familiar figure gliding along the footpath and calls out.

“Seungyoon-ssi!”

Seungyoon turns as he skates past, catching Jiho’s eye before he comes to a stop and kicks his board up into his hand. His smile when Jiho comes over to him makes him that much more attractive for how genuine it is. Jiho has been so wrapped up in Minho and composing these past few days he’s forgotten about Seungyoon. Seeing him again brings back the memory of Seungyoon walking into the lecture hall and how good he looked, but he looks even better today, in the sun, his glasses tucked into the front pocket of his button-up shirt.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing those?” Jiho points to his chest. “You might bump into something, or someone.”

Seungyoon laughs a laugh that Jiho isn’t entirely sure isn’t faked. Jiho doesn’t know where he stands with Seungyoon, and that makes him all the more appealing. “They’re more for reading than anything. Lecture notes, tutorial notes.”

“Phone numbers,” Jiho offers, and Seungyoon laughs again. 

“I need all the help I can get.”

Jiho makes a noise of assent. “I would ask you for that coffee, but I have to get to class.”

Seungyoon gives him a look that’s hard to read. “That’s a shame, I would have said yes this time.” This cat and mouse game they’re playing is cute, and fun, but Jiho thinks of how badly Minho wants to win, and tries a different tack. 

“How about something else? Are you free tomorrow?”

“Depends what for.”

“Minho and I have a gig in Hongdae. You should come.” He can’t help the way his heart beats a little harder in his chest, as if he’s asking a girl to go on a date with him, as if he’s waiting for Minho to lean over and close the distance between them.

Seungyoon looks away for a second as he thinks about it. “I’m not sure if I should. I’m still your teacher.”

“But coffee is ok?”

Seungyoon gives him a sheepish smile. “I just said that so I wouldn’t look like an asshole,” he says, which earns a laugh from Jiho, “but now I do.”

“Listen,” Jiho says, “it’s open to everyone. You can just pretend I didn’t invite you. Vasco’s also playing that night, say you’re there to see him.”

“I’ll have to find out who Vasco is, but that sounds like a plan.”

Jiho pauses scribbling the address on a piece of paper torn from his notebook. “You don’t know Vasco?”

“Uh,” Seungyoon says, “should I?”

Jiho waves him off. Seungyoon clearly doesn’t run in the same circles as he does, it’s ridiculous to assume he would know what he was in for. 

“Will I like their music?”

“Yeah,” Jiho says, more hopeful than assured, “yeah. Absolutely. You’ll love it.”

Seungyoon takes the paper and gives Jiho another winning smile that Jiho feels in his toes. He’s never met anyone this stunning, Minho excluded. They would make a good pair, and he thinks about it as Seungyoon skates away, how far Minho’s willing to go, if it would just be another hook up to him or something more now that the stakes are higher. Seungyoon is their teacher, he could get into trouble for being with one of his students, let alone two, if anyone found out. 

But. That’s a pretty big if to Jiho. 

—

The club is packed, as per usual on a night when Vasco performs. Jiho felt his nerves start to build a couple hours before they got to the club, and now they’re here, just about to go on as the opener, their voices and their lyrics amping up the crowd. 

Minho pulls him aside before they go on and gives him a look so honest, so full of purpose and joy at what he does, that Jiho almost feels bad that Minho is whiling away at university when he could be living out his dream right now. The feeling only lasts a second before he remembers that if Minho really wanted to, he could quit university and go his own way. Since he hasn’t done it yet, Jiho assumes he mustn’t want it that badly to throw away the plan they made. He must know that his dream can wait for him, that he’s talented and hardworking enough to make it happen when he wants, that it won’t rest on chance for him. The moment passes quickly and Minho pushes Jiho on.

When they get out on the stage, the heat of the lights and the noise of the music envelop him in a bubble that he can’t find anywhere else; it’s addictive, and it powers him through his nerves. Like always, Minho stands beside him the whole time, commanding the audience’s attention as they let themselves be swayed by Jiho and Minho’s music. It’s a feeling that could take over Jiho’s life if he’s not careful. 

They’re sweaty and running on adrenaline when they finish their set. Jiho didn’t see him when he was up there, but Seungyoon comes over to the bar where they’re downing water like it’s ambrosia and congratulates them, looking flushed from the heat of the club.

“I’ve never been to a rap concert before,” he says. He’s wearing a sweater with patches.

“It shows,” Jiho says, and laughs. Minho grins and puts his arm around Seungyoon’s shoulders, drawing him close. 

“A newbie, then. I hope it lived up to your expectations.”

“What expectations?” Seungyoon asks. “I didn’t even know you guys were rappers.”

“We’re not,” Jiho says, “we’re actually part of an avante-garde theatre troupe.”

Minho nods, suddenly serious. “It’s an ode to the gluttony of kings and wild abandon of court jesters. Next week we’re painting ourselves in glitter and performing magic tricks.”

“With dildos,” Jiho says. It’s easy to get in the rhythm with Minho. His weirdness matches Jiho’s, their baggage almost one at this point in their friendship, their minds melding into a hive. Jiho gives Minho a _look_ and tilts his head at Seungyoon, and Minho responds with a grin that means he’s on board.

Seungyoon nods thoughtfully. “I’ve heard dildos have magic powers, I wonder if you can attest to that?”

“Well, with the right application, a person can see God.”

This brings another laugh out of Seungyoon, and Jiho’s starting to become too proud of himself that he can do that. Seungyoon glances between them, and Jiho’s just about to suggest it—because Minho won’t, not when he wants someone this badly, Jiho knows him—when someone tugs on the elbow of Seungyoon’s sweater. Minho takes his arm back and steps closer to Jiho.

“Oh,” Seungyoon says, pulling the guy closer. “Right, this is Jiao, my, uh. My friend.”

Jiho notices the pause and Seungyoon’s slight awkwardness; he also notices how attractive Jiao is and his broken speech when he bows and talks about how much he enjoyed the performance. He looks older, much older, but he’s their age. He just seems that much more accomplished because of his collared shirt and his height. 

It’s almost midnight, and Jiho is starving. “Do you want to grab dinner?” Minho looks like he’s about to pass out, whether from Jiao’s presence or how hungry he gets after a performance, and when Jiao and Seungyoon agree, Minho leads the way down the street to a place that sells the best chicken Jiho’s ever had. 

After they’ve ordered, and Minho and Jiho have bickered over Jiho ordering the same thing every time, they take a seat at the table they always sit at, and Minho pulls out Jiho’s chair—the chair Jiho always sits in, next to the wall—for him.

Seungyoon gives them a look that says he thinks he knows something. “So, how long have you two been together?”

Minho and Jiho exchange a look, Minho’s eyes bulging slightly at being caught off guard. Maybe it’s obvious to Seungyoon, who Jiho suspects plays for their team as well—or at least a different team than the majority of people—but Jiho hopes his and Minho’s closeness isn’t obvious to everyone. 

“We’re just friends,” Minho says, unconvincingly, as Jiho says, “We’re not together.”

“Oh,” Seungyoon says, “my mistake. You just—act like a couple. It’s adorable.”

Minho looks uncomfortable, clears his throat, and gets up with a, “I think our order is ready,” ditching them to wait at the counter and leaving Jiho alone to field Seungyoon’s questions.

“And you and Jiao, then? Just friends?”

“Yeah,” Seungyoon says, giving Jiho that same smile. “I was actually going to ask how you manage having a relationship when it’s still so taboo, especially in the underground scene.”

Jiho lets out a strained laugh. “Well, I’m a big guy. No one’s going to pick a fight with me. And you’d be surprised at the open mindedness of people. My friends that know—they don’t care. They’ve got my back. It’s not the same for everyone, I know, so I’m pretty lucky. What’s it like where you’re from?”

“Pretty much the same,” Seungyoon says. He turns to Jiao, and his eyes grow soft with a look that destroys the hope Jiho had of getting with him. “I pretty much lived in a bubble growing up, but I think that my mom protected me a lot. I never told her—I didn’t even really know myself until I moved to Seoul—but I think she knew anyway.”

Jiao says something in Chinese and Seungyoon laughs. “Yes, the passion of the cut sleeve.”

Jiao turns to Jiho, speaking in Korean. “I’m rich, so nobody fucks with me.” It’s then that Minho returns with their food, as they’re all laughing, looking more hungry than interested in what they’re laughing at.

“The show was really good, by the way,” Seungyoon says, as they all start to dig in. “I forgot to say that before, but you guys are amazing. You work really well together.” 

Minho beams with a mouth full of food, but it’s not until later, after the next hour of conversation, after they’ve paid for their food, when they’re saying goodbye under the streetlights and Seungyoon and Jiao turn away that a different look comes over Minho’s face, a soft one, of longing. Jiho’s never seen that look on his face before, but he figures it’s Seungyoon; anyone would long after Seungyoon. That’s just who Seungyoon is, and Jiho isn’t Seungyoon.


	3. we won't get too sentimental

It’s almost four a.m. by the time they stop outside Jiho’s apartment complex, but Minho doesn’t want to go home. Jiho doesn’t say anything when Minho follows him into the building, the elevator, the hallway leading to his apartment, doesn’t say anything when Minho closes the door behind them and pushes Jiho up against it. He puts it down to the post-show adrenaline wearing off, but he knows it’s more than the money burning a hole in his pocket and the beef settling in his stomach—it’s the way Seungyoon looked at Jiao, the way the backs of their hands brushed with their arms laid on the table. In the moment Seungyoon laughed and wiped sauce off of Jiao’s lip, Minho would have given anything to be him. 

It’s shitty of him now to be using Jiho to make himself feel better, but that’s what they do. When it’s after midnight and Jiho’s struck out with whatever piece he’s been eyeing off, he’ll call Minho and come to Minho’s dorm to suck him off while Minho’s roommate sleeps six feet away from them. They fuck because there’s nothing better to do, or, like now, they fuck because Minho wants to replace the hole in himself with a feeling and not a plot point. They fuck because it feels good.

Minho sucks on Jiho’s tongue as he tugs Jiho’s jacket down his arms, kissing Jiho the way he likes, the way he taught Minho, and it feels just as right as all the other times. They’re good at it, Jiho shrugging off his jacket in time for Minho to pull up his shirt, grinding their hips together just right to get each other hard. When Minho drops to his knees, Jiho’s hands card through his hair, petting him, encouraging him as he kisses down Jiho’s stomach. He splits Jiho’s jeans open and has his mouth around him soon enough, taking him in all the way until Jiho’s head thunks against the door. The lights are off—Jiho didn’t bother to turn them on when they came in—and when Minho pulls back to suckle at the head of Jiho’s cock, he gazes upon the way the streetlights play across his skin.

Jiho’s already leaking into Minho’s mouth and Minho uses it to slick Jiho up, pre-come and saliva working as lube, when he gets an idea. “Turn around,” Minho says, thinking about all the times Jiho’s done this for him, how he’s never returned the favour. “I want to try something.” Jiho doesn’t need much convincing and doesn’t sound like he regrets it when Minho pushes his tongue in past the tight ring of muscle; instead, he makes a guttural noise from the back of his throat that sounds like it’s ripped out of him. 

“Fuck, that feels so good. Your tongue,” Jiho says, and Minho wonders if he says that to other people, if anyone else has ever done this to him—for him. Minho suddenly wants more, not content to use his tongue but his fingers as well, his cock. He works Jiho over until Jiho’s fisting himself, more staving off coming than bringing himself off, before he stands, crowding Jiho into the door. Minho presses himself up against Jiho, shamelessly rubbing against his ass.

“I really want to fuck you,” Minho says, surprising himself. 

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Jiho’s eyes are closed and he leans his head back on Minho’s shoulder. 

“No, I. I really want to—be inside you.”

Jiho opens his eyes at that, and a grimace comes across his face. “Minho,” he says, like he’s letting Minho down, like it’s the end of the night and Minho is a bad date, not someone who’s made Jiho come so hard he’s cried. But Minho knows why.

It’s another rule they have. They can’t take it too far. Handjobs, blowjobs, rimjobs are all one thing, but what Minho wants is another. That rule is an established one, used to keep the boundaries clear and their friendship intact, but it doesn’t mean Minho can’t take the rejection for what it is, that he doesn’t feel it curl in his stomach, the humiliation of being rejected by the one person who’s always accepted everything Minho’s thrown his way. It stings, but Minho’s an adult. He can pick himself back up.

“We can just,” Jiho says, turning around, resting his arms on Minho’s shoulders, “fool around more. That’s what you want, right? This can’t get too serious.”

Minho knows it’s true at the same time he wishes it wasn’t. Not just for the sex, but the companionship. They should be able to do what they want without it interfering with their friendship; they’ve survived so far. 

“Who cares about _serious_ ,” Minho says, mostly to himself. “The rules are bullshit, we’ve both broken them so many times.”

Jiho gives him an incredulous look and pulls his arms away. “The rules were your idea,” he says. “You made them up. What’s with you tonight? Do you really want to fuck something that badly?”

“Hey,” Minho says, but he’s got no fight in him tonight. “Maybe I just want to fuck you. Is that such a bad thing?”

Jiho laughs, and it sounds bitter. It sounds like more rejection. “Now you want to fuck me? This isn’t about me, this is about Seungyoon, and you feeling sorry for yourself because he doesn’t want to get with you.”

Minho takes a few breaths before responding because, as usual, Jiho is right. He can read Minho so well it’s like he’s in his mind, and as terrifying as it is to think that Jiho can see into the depths of him, it’s even scarier to think he still wants to be Minho’s friend.

“Fuck. I’m sorry, I’m being such a shithead.”

“Yeah,” Jiho says, kissing him lightly. “You are. But I expect it from you.”

“Hey,” Minho says again, and Jiho moves away, pulling his pants up. Minho tries to will away his erection as he opens the door, stopping at the sound of Jiho’s voice.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to, but I think it’s better we don’t.”

Minho looks back at him, at his silhouette against the city line, the way he holds himself, proud and sure of himself in a way Minho envies. Jiho doesn’t have to pretend. “Yeah,” he says, and then he leaves.

 

—

“You know how we’re, like, eighty per cent water?” Kyung stops to chew on his pencil, with his feet on the desk and leaning so far back in his chair Minho expects him to topple at any moment. 

“Sixty five,” Jiho corrects. “You’re a biologist, how do you not know this?”

“You say gamja. Anyway, we’re sixty five per cent water. And water is affected by the moon. Ever heard of the English word lunatic? Luna like moon.”

“What’s your point?” Minho asks. It’s not that he’s losing interest in the conversation, but Kyung does tend to go on. 

“So, werewolves—”

“We’re leaving,” Jiho says, standing. He’s at the door before Kyung falls out of his chair, and he looks back at Minho. “Coming?”

“I wanna hear about the werewolves,” Minho says, putting on his best air of innocence, and Jiho shrugs.

“Alright, man, do you. I have a tonne of assignments, so I’ll see you later?”

Minho nods and watches Jiho leave, ignorant to the way Kyung pretends to gag from the floor. It’s strange watching Jiho go and not be tagging along beside him, but he tries not to read anything into it. They’re separate people, they have their own lives, it’s fine. 

Kyung dusts himself off and takes a seat, again putting his feet up and leaning back in his chair, because, despite being the smartest person in every room he’s in, he never learns. “Werewolves are ruled by the moon, so they must have a larger percentage of water in their bodies. Has anyone tested this, you ask. Well, my friend, I have good news for you, in fact—”

“Kyung,” Minho says, “I would love to hear about this, but I have something more important.”

Kyung sticks his pencil behind his ear and spreads his hands in an inviting gesture that makes Minho feel like he’s about to buy a rug and be ripped off. “You’ve come to the right place.”

“Jiho,” Minho starts, and Kyung nods, sagely. “You’re his best friend. How do you talk him into something that’s probably a bad idea?”

Kyung scoffs. “You can’t.”

“Okay, hypothetically, then.”

“If we’re talking hypotheticals, do I have a monocle in this situation? Do I have a moustache? How big is my moustache?”

This conversation is starting to turn down a path Minho should have expected from Kyung, and yet didn’t. “Monopoly Guy big.”

Kyung pretends to tweak his pretend Monopoly Guy moustache. “Okay, what’s the situation?”

Minho waits a beat before replying. “A threesome,” he says, and Kyung stares at him.

“I can’t help you with this.”

“You don’t have to ask him for me. I’m just asking you, how do I talk him into it?”

Kyung sighs and takes his feet off the desk. “You have to convince him it’s his idea. But knowing Jiho, he’s already thought of every possible way a situation could turn out, so honestly, if it’s on the cards, he’s thought about it already. Dare I ask who the third is?”

Minho makes an abortive motion with his hands. “It’s—a tutor. You don’t know him, he’s in the music department.”

“Kang Seungyoon,” Kyung says, and for a minute Minho is too shocked to reply. 

“How could you possibly know that?” The conversation has taken several turns Minho didn’t expect, and for Kyung to be able to pick the one correct name out of all the young, attractive, maybe-on-the-level tutors in the music department should also not have surprised Minho, and yet, that did, too.

“Of course it’s Seungyoon. All the boys fall for Seungyoon. Unfortunately, for you, he has a boyfriend.”

“I know,” Minho says, mostly into his hands. “Don’t remind me. Jiao’s great. He’s literally perfect. I would date him.”

“ _I_ would date him. He’s loaded.” Kyung starts to laugh at Minho’s dismay. “I would definitely date him over you.”

“Thanks.” Minho leans back in his chair and sighs. All his ideas for how to get with Seungyoon have been awful, and with the roadblocks that keep popping up, he’s quickly losing hope that it’ll ever happen, now or in the near or even distant future. Very distant. Way, way distant. He’s playing a long game.

“Cheer up, sad clown.” Kyung pats Minho’s knee in a discomforting gesture of antagonism. 

“Do you think,” Minho says, pauses, considers dropping it, but Kyung urges him on. “Do you think that Jiho'll ever want to sleep with me?”

Several expressions cross Kyung’s face, the entire spectrum from confusion to exasperation, in a matter of seconds. “He’s in love with you, so I thought you guys were already sleeping together.”

“Well, we’re kind of—what? Not going all the way, we’re just—it’s—what?”

Kyung’s expression lands on exasperated and he heaves a comically large sigh at MInho’s ignorance. “He loves you, dipshit. His last three songs have been about lusting after someone he can’t have. You really didn’t notice?”

“I thought they were about Seungyoon,” Minho mumbles, trying very hard not to think about it even as Kyung’s pointing it out. “He doesn’t—he’s not _in love_ with me, that’s ridiculous. He knows it’s just casual. We’re still just friends. With benefits. Fuckbuddies. Whatever.”

“Then you should definitely not sleep with him. You don’t want to go breaking his fragile little heart.”

Minho groans into his hands again. If he knew how complicated this thing with Jiho was going to get, he would’ve—he would’ve done exactly the same thing he’s already done, which is have sex with Jiho, against all the better advice of if not all then mostly everyone in their social circle, that only came after the fact. It would have been really handy, he thinks, knowing it would have in no way changed his mind, to have heard all that before he hooked up with Jiho. Like now. This is a prime example of advice to receive _before_ hooking up with someone.

“If I break it off with him now, he’s going to hate me less than if I let it go on too long, right?”

Kyung gives him a flat look. “Just fucking elope to New Zealand, dude. Put a ring on it. You love him, he loves you, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” Minho says, mostly through gritted teeth, “that I don’t love Jiho. I mean, I love him, he’s my best friend, but what I mean is—I don’t love him like that.”

“Can I just ask then—what’s the longest you’ve ever hooked up with someone?”

Minho thinks about leaving before Kyung can delve too far into his secrets and mind, but answers anyway, in case it proves fruitful. “Ten months.”

“With Jiho, right? Do you usually get bored after a couple months?”

“Nothing else has lasted that long, so I’d say yeah. A month is usually the longest.”

Kyung leans back in his chair, and Minho wishes he would fall out of it again, templing his fingers and putting his chin on them. “So what’s so special about Jiho that you’ve been with him for so long?”

“Are you kidding? He’s great. He never pressures me to be exclusive, because he’s not an exclusive kind of person. He loves sex just as much as I do, and he’s cool when we don’t have it, because we’re both busy and sometimes we’re just tired. And, you know, he’s amazing at it. I mean, his mouth—”

Kyung puts his hand up while he makes a face that says he decidedly does not want to know. “Please, details. No.”

“And he’s just fun to be around. He’s just—fun. He gets me. I get him. It’s a real, true friendship, with the added bonus of sex. It’s—” Minho can’t find the words for a moment; he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to sum up what it is they have through language. Being with Jiho makes words irrelevant. “Nothing short of incredible.”

Kyung gives him another flat look like Minho is being a complete dickhead again, despite the fact that Kyung was the one who fell out of his chair, and is now falling out of it again. Minho tries not to laugh for all of three milliseconds before he can’t help it. 

“You ever think—ow, fuck, again—that maybe you like being with Jiho so much because you feel something for him?”

“Yeah, I feel like he’s a fucking fantastic friend. A real pal. A buddy. Who swallows.”

“I swear to god, Minho, I’ll kick you out of my lab.”

Minho stands and helps Kyung up, hoping his ass is as bruised as his ego. “I’ve got assignments, so I’ll let you get back to cloning sheep cells, or whatever it is you do. Good talk.”

Kyung gives him a salute and gets back in his chair, and Minho escapes before the conversation gets too real again. It’s a tough thing to chew, and the walk back to his dorm isn’t nearly enough to think about what Kyung’s just told him. The thing is—he doesn’t think he loves Jiho like that, which just makes it worse that Jiho might love him. He should break it off before it gets too serious that Jiho can’t separate his feelings from the sex, but he also has complete faith in Jiho that he won’t make it weird, that he can protect himself enough that he won’t get hurt. Minho also just doesn’t want it to end. 

While he lies staring up at the mold spots on his ceiling, he makes a pact with himself that he won’t let it get too serious, and that he’ll do everything he can to make sure Jiho doesn’t get hurt, that Minho won’t be the one to hurt him.


	4. so tired of hearing all your boy problems

“We love the kid,” Woosung says. They’re sharing a plate of octopus, but he’s not touching it, chopsticks lying forgotten on the table. “We really do. He’s really genuine, he’s a good rapper, and he’s hilarious. He showed me how to make a rocket out of a bottle of Coke. It turned out horribly. Bobby’s crazy.”

Jiho laughs at the image of a bunch of idiot boys with no self-preservation instincts getting sprayed in the face, and then feels bad about it when Woosung pouts. “I figured the whole idol-rapper-underground-rapper rivalry was fabricated.”

“Of course.” Woosung starts on the octopus, picking at it delicately, playing with it before he finally eats it. Jiho’s not hungry, for once. A late lunch with Hanhae, Jukyung and Hyoseob meant he was full from food and reminiscing, happy for them that they’re doing so well, and surprisingly not at all jealous. Like with his friends, he’s happy that Woosung is getting the exposure he deserves. “It’s just for the ratings. Also, the money. The PDs encourage us to start shit with each other, and pay us for it. I’m not made of stone.” 

Jiho looks him over for a minute, taking in the circles under his eyes and his lack of appetite. It’s rare to see Woosung like this, considering he’s usually the one eating the most and taking up all the space in the room with his charm and personality. “Are you okay, man?”

Woosung pushes his plate away. “I think the pressure is starting to get to me. But it doesn’t matter.” Woosung smiles, turning on his charm. “Come feature in one of my songs. On the stage. Come on _Show Me The Money_ with me.”

“Woah, really?” Jiho’s first thought is of Minho, who wants to be seen so badly, who would’ve debuted with Jihoon in Block B if he hadn’t followed Jiho instead, who would kill for an opportunity like this. “Isn’t it better for your chances if you have a featuring who’s actually famous?”

“Yeah, I called Snoop Dog but he’s got a date that night.”

“Seriously, man.” It’s an amazing opportunity, but something’s holding him back from saying yes straight away. He wants to, he really does, but he wonders how he’s going to explain this to Minho, who’s going to be jealous even though he’ll try his hardest not to show it.

“Seriously, hyung,” Woosung repeats, “you’re so good. You’re one of the best underground rappers in the game. I know you’ve been working all this time, not just sitting back and studying like a good boy. This means exposure for you, too, exposure you deserve.”

It’s hard not to let Woosung’s words get to him. Maybe he does deserve it, but who says he’s the only one who does? Who says he’s the most deserving?

Woosung looks at him expectantly. “So? Don’t let me down.”

“Yeah,” Jiho says, “yes, I’ll come on the show with you.”

“Hyung, you’ve made me the happiest girl in the world.” Jiho laughs and flicks a bit of octopus at him. “You still going by Nacseo?”

“It’s Zico now, I changed it after Japan.”

Woosung nods thoughtfully. “Zico. I like it.”

They pay for their food and part ways not long after, Jiho heading back to Gwanak-gu and Woosung back to wherever he’s living nowadays, probably holed up in some shitty apartment with a bunch of other rappers, which seems about the best place for him. Jiho gets a text from Kyung while he’s driving and checks it at a traffic light.

K:  
 _You should be careful with Minho. Don’t want to see you get hurt._

Jiho stares at it until the traffic light turns green and waits until he’s back in his apartment to text back.

Z:  
 _I’ll be fine, I know what I’m doing_

Kyung’s reply is immediate. _If you say so_

Jiho throws his phone on the bed before he follows, lying face down on the covers, feeling the beginnings of a migraine. Woosung was right about him working; he’s exhausted from pulling an all-nighter trying to get a song finished before he ran out of inspiration, and then back to back classes all morning. 

_So here’s my theory on werewolves_ , Kyung’s next message reads, and Jiho turns his phone off.

—

Jiho still can’t stop thinking about it. Minho wants to fuck him. Minho _said_ he wanted to fuck him. Jiho could put it down to Minho just being horny, but all the other times he’s been blown off by an object of his affection, he’s been content to just do whatever, fool around, use their hands and mouths and nothing more, but he knows this time is different. He saw the way Minho gazed, rapt, at Seungyoon, when Seungyoon explained how Korean music has its roots in Chinese music, and then how his eyes dulled even as he laughed at Jiao’s joke about uniting the two cultures in more ways than one. 

“You two have a good understanding of music history already,” Seungyoon said. He’s cute when he eats, shoving food into his mouth with abandon, his cheeks puffed up with it and his lips shining. “You must have been paying attention in class.”

“It’s easy to, when we have good teachers.” Minho was shameless in his schmoozing, but Jiao didn’t seem to care that Minho was hitting on his boyfriend right in front of him. Maybe he didn’t understand the words but actions speak louder, anyway, and Minho was being so obvious that even Jiho couldn’t rival it.

“Ah, yes. That. I am your teacher, after all.” Seungyoon said it as if he’d only remembered himself. Minho blinked like he only just remembered, too and Jiho was a little surprised. He couldn’t forget; Seungyoon is that much more appealing because he’s off limits, not so much a prize to be won as someone worth the trouble it would bring. 

Jiho put on a smile that wasn’t as coy as it was hopeful. “It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.”

“It bothers the administration,” Seungyoon said, and Jiho was unsure of how he meant that, but it was probably meant to be less suggestive than it came out—maybe he was thinking about them the way they were thinking about him. Seungyoon blushed and shovelled more food into his mouth to cover the lingering silence.

All throughout the meal, Minho kept glancing at Seungyoon. In fairness, it was hard not to glance at Seungyoon, but Jiho managed only because he was glancing at Minho so much. He laughed to himself about the trio they made, turning it into a cough so no one would think he was losing his mind: Jiho longing after Minho longing after Seungyoon. He can’t write it better.

The thoughts linger with him for days, and he resists texting Minho in that time, hoping his mind will turn off it’s one-way track if he doesn’t, but he forgets to factor into the situation Minho texting him. It’s eleven o’clock at night, and neither of them are asleep. Apparently they’re both thinking of each other, though.

M:  
 _Bored_

Jiho looks at the screen and doesn’t reply. It feels like a temptation more than salvation from the unending piles of assignments he has.

M:  
 _What are you wearing_

The message comes a minute later, because Minho has an impressive need to be reassured he’s loved at all times, even if that love comes in the form of an immediate reply.

M:  
 _Send me a pic_

Jiho does reply this time, worn down knowing Minho will just keep texting him until he does.

Z:  
 _If you want to come over, all you have to do is say so_

M:  
 _I want to come over just to fuck you through the mattress, but we agreed not to_

Jiho puts his phone down and stares up at his ceiling, waiting for divine intervention, or a sign of what to do with a best friend like this, who drives him mental at the same time is the best thing in Jiho’s life.

Z:  
 _I’m starting to regret that agreement_

Jiho knows it’s the wrong thing to say even as he hits send, but it’s out there now, and he can’t take it back. It could be the start of something that does actually make Jiho lose his mind and the ability to protect himself under the influence of Minho picking him apart like he’s a song they’re analysing for their final exam. He has to wait a few minutes for Minho’s reply, the whole time hoping Minho’s too freaked out to do anything while he expects the next message to be _I’m coming over_. He’s dreading it, too.

M:  
 _I’m already hard just thinking about it_

Jiho looks back up at the ceiling, but there’s nothing there except the streaks of the shitty paint job the landlord did before he moved in. 

Z:  
 _Sorry can’t help you with that try again next semester_

M:  
 _Tell me what you want me to do to you_

Jiho is so close to putting his phone in the freezer, or tossing it out a window, or not replying, but he’s so into Minho he knows he won’t do any of those things. It’s not just that Minho’s hot, because he wasn’t when they met, when he was skinny and his teeth were wonky and he had a different nose, and Jiho didn’t even think of him like that, didn’t think much of him until he heard Minho rapping and knew from that first verse that he was going to be a star. It’s not just that Minho is delightful to be around, whether he’s sober or tired or fully awake running on 3 am shots of Red Bull, and how he looks at everyone like they’ve got his sole attention, and how that attention feels when it’s directed at Jiho. It’s not just that Minho is amazing at everything he puts energy into, and can make even the most boring of history lessons seem interesting when he’s paying attention and knows what he’s talking about. It’s that he’s _Minho_. He’s all of those things, and more. And Jiho wants all of him. 

Z:  
 _I want you to put your hands on me_

M:  
 _Where_

Z:  
 _Everywhere_

M:  
 _I love touching you, you’re so responsive_

Jiho would be surprised he’s getting hard at the mention of it, but he’s gotten himself off just thinking about it before. At least now Minho’s in on it, too. He gets up from his desk and slumps onto his bed, which still smells faintly of Minho’s aftershave from all the times he’s been over, and all the times Jiho hasn’t washed his sheets.

Z:  
 _I want your mouth too_

M:  
 _I want to kiss and lick you all over. Put my mouth on every part of you_

Jiho shoves his pants down far enough to get a hand around himself, and it’s not as good as if it was Minho’s hand, but it will do.

M:  
 _Especially your cock. You sucking me while I’m sucking you, fuck._

Jiho is close to coming already, but if he staves off it’ll be better. It would be easy to convince Minho to come over, but he doesn’t know if he’d last the twenty minutes it takes Minho to get to his apartment, and he doesn’t want to make Minho run over here with a hard-on, even though he probably would. 

Z:  
 _I wouldn’t let you straight away I’d make you beg for it_

M:  
 _I know how much you love hearing me beg_

Z:  
 _You know how much you love begging_

M:  
 _Do you want me to beg now_

Jiho has to grip himself to stop from coming at the thought, because Minho’s right, he loves hearing it, loves seeing Minho crawl up the bed towards him with that puppy-dog look on his face that turns from innocent to lewd by the time he’s reached Jiho’s knees. 

Z:  
 _Yes_

He’s not expecting his phone to light up with a call, but he presses accept just to see the expression on Minho’s face. He’s not disappointed; Minho looks wrecked, like he hasn’t slept in a few days and he’s been running his hands through the dark mop of his usually perfectly coiffed hair, but also like he’s so hard up he’ll do whatever Jiho wants.

“ _Jebal, hyung_. Let me touch you, let me fuck you.”

“No,” Jiho says, surprising himself. He wants to say yes, but, like before, something’s stopping him. Minho’s rules, maybe, or the promise of how much it’s going to hurt when he starts to fall in love with Minho for real and Minho doesn’t love him back. “Touch yourself first. Let me see.”

Minho hastens to set his phone up on his bedside table, and Jiho hopes his roommate isn’t home for this, or that at least he’s as deep a sleeper tonight as he has been every time Jiho’s come round. Minho positions his phone so that Jiho can see down the length of him, the shape of his arms, his bare chest, the rise of his hip bone as he rolls onto his side, the bulge in his shorts and then his cock as Minho pulls it out. 

“You haven’t touched yourself yet?” Jiho’s can’t really get the words out, standing as he is on the precipice of the next stage of their relationship with no idea how far the fall is, unsure if Minho would jump with him.

Minho shakes his head. “I was waiting for you.” He always likes to put on a show and tonight that’s the point. He strokes his hand across his chest, his pecs, down his stomach, breathing deeply. He’s not rushed anymore, taking his time as he touches himself leisurely, pushing his shorts down and off until he’s naked, his body beaded with sweat from the heat of the night. 

“Tell me what to do,” Minho says, more a murmur than anything else, something that breaks the silence of Jiho’s internal monologue. 

“Take your cock in your hand,” Jiho says, and Minho does, the both of them exhaling at the same time. “Get yourself off.” Minho bites his lip, closing his eyes as he starts to stroke. “You’re doing so well.” Minho blushes at the compliment like he always does when he’s got his mouth and Jiho and Jiho’s carding his hands through Minho’s hair, whispering about how much he likes it, how sweet Minho’s mouth feels, how it gets him off every time. “Such a good boy.”

Minho looks up, his eyes wide and shining, still stroking himself. “Can I see you, too? Please, let me look at you.” His voice is softer now, a low whisper that does things to Jiho just as much as the rest of the picture, so Jiho obliges, turning his camera around so Minho gets a good look at him. “I want to be there with you,” he says, voice breaking, sounding like he’s close to coming already. He ducks his head again like maybe he didn’t mean for that to come out, but Jiho’s not going to let him get away with saying things he doesn’t mean.

“What would you do to me?”

Minho exhales sharply again as Jiho takes his cock in hand, thumbing at the head, bucking up into his own fist. “I’d fuck you so good you wouldn’t be able to think about anyone else.”

It’s a cruel thing to say, and maybe it’s the truth of it that has Jiho coming all over his own stomach, wishing Minho would at the same time he knows what a terrible idea it would be and how close he is to it happening anyway, even without Minho fucking him. He waits for Minho to come a minute later, whispering stupid shit that neither of them pay attention to, before he ends the call. He sends a quick text saying he has an early class and then he does turn his phone off, wishing the emptiness inside him would turn off just as quickly.

—

People watch them sitting on the curb with their face masks and licking ice cream off their fingers, but Jiho can’t find it in himself to care.

“If I tell you something,” Jiho says, carefully not looking in Kyung’s direction. “Can you be happy for me and not make this about you?”

Kyung shrugs. “I can try.”

“Woosung invited me to feature with him on _Show Me The Money_.”

Kyung stares at him for a few seconds. “That is amazing, and anyone would kill for that opportunity. You said yes, right? If you didn’t say yes then you’re an idiot.”

“You already called me an idiot this morning for not knowing what abscission means. But yeah, I said yes.”

Kyung slaps him on the back, harder than Jiho thought possible for someone of Kyung’s build. “I’m proud of you. You’re moving up in the world. I thought it was never going to happen, but you proved me wrong.”

Jiho rolls his eyes. “Thanks, man. You’re a real beacon of support.”

Kyung’s expression turns soft and it’s suddenly too much to bear, so Jiho looks away again. “I really am proud of you. Out of all of us, I think you deserve it the most.”

“Thanks,” Jiho said, stripped of his sarcasm this time. Kyung said it, though, and maybe if Kyung believes it, then it is a question of deserving.


	5. i've been lonely baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let it be known i have done minimal amount of research for this fic

Minho can’t fall asleep for hours after Jiho’s hung up on him, his mind racing even as his body begs for sleep. The bell chimes of Kyung’s words ring in his head, a warning with disastrous consequences if Minho doesn’t heed it. It’s unfair of him, he knows, to call Jiho up like that, to beg him for something he doesn’t want, but—Jiho does want it. He said so himself. He just—doesn’t think it’s a good idea, and it’s shitty of Minho to try and convince him otherwise, because Jiho’s the kind of person who thinks about things from every angle, he’s probably already assessed all the pros and cons and come to the conclusion that it’s not worth it. That Minho isn’t worth it. That their friendship could suffer if what they’re doing gets too serious. That maybe he’ll get hurt if Minho doesn’t love him in the same way he loves Minho. 

All of that is true, and it buzzes in Minho’s head until two or three or four in the morning, who can keep count anymore, days passing in flashes of sound and colour and feelings he doesn’t want to look at too closely, guilt and sadness and longing, directed where, he doesn’t know. The fact that Jiho loves him isn’t negated by what Minho feels, because that’s something, that’s real—just as real as the bed Minho’s lying on and the phone call they just had; it’s just not _love_ , at least not the love Minho’s heard about in romance dramas, that heart-fluttering, doves singing, stumbling over his words, my whole world revolves around you kind of love. He’s too comfortable around Jiho for that kind of shit, and Jiho wouldn’t even know what to do with someone who was that in love with him. He rarely gets into relationships because he never knows when anyone’s actually into him, and it’s adorable from Minho’s perspective, but also kind of hilarious at the same time. They aren’t necessarily keeping score, and Jiho’s never cared about it anyway, but Minho’s been in more relationships, because he knows how to keep someone around for more than one night.

Or, he did. Now that he’s thinking about it, he realises how rare it is that he goes to anyone’s place anymore, and how often he goes to Jiho’s, and how shitty that is of him to take up all of Jiho’s time when they could both be out meeting the loves of their respective lives. That cute barista with the nice lips at the best of the campus coffee shops who slipped Minho her number with his iced latte the other day. His tutor, with the nice voice and nicer lips, who is off limits for more than one reason; he could be the love of Minho’s life and not even know it, yet. 

—

Jiho’s not in class the next day, and Minho can lose focus listening to Seungyoon’s voice for the full hour and a half without Jiho kicking him under the table or laughing about the expressions he’s making, but it means the lecture is less enjoyable now that Jiho’s not scribbling pictures of Minho wearing various hats in the margins of his notebook. Minho has to scribble his own pictures of himself, and that’s no fun.

He’s not in class the next day, when they have their tutorial, so he misses the spectacle of Seungyoon swaggering into the room ten minutes late, half his face obscured behind ridiculously-sized sunglasses and looking like he didn’t sleep the night before. After dumping his satchel on the desk, he pulls out a wad of paper that he shuffles for thirty seconds before he spills it all over the floor. Minho tries not to laugh, but he’s also the closest to Seungyoon so he helps pick everything up.

“Are you okay, Seungyoon-ssi?”

Seungyoon grunts, then seems to realise where he is and says, “Yes, thank you. I’m not feeling well.”

“Is it contagious?” Minho asks, just to be a shithead. The after effects of fourteen shots of vodka and three bottles of soju isn’t contagious—neither is the morning after a good time—and that looks about where Seungyoon’s at. 

“Is it more believable if I say yes?” Seungyoon asks, murmuring under his breath, loud enough for only Minho to hear. 

Minho winks. “I’ll keep your secret.”

Seungyoon turns to the rest of the class as Minho straightens out his papers and takes a seat. “Okay, so. Today we’re going to—okay. Debating. Just—split into two groups. One of your is going to argue—” He rifles through his papers to pull out a page of handwritten notes. “Argue why Big Bang is the greatest force in contemporary pop music. And the other side—uh.”

“Shinee is the greatest force in contemporary pop music,” someone says.

Seungyoon opens his mouth to say something and then stops. “Yes, good. That. Okay, go.” He takes a seat in the corner of the room, and Minho is half tempted to sit with him before he joins the nearest group instead. Seungyoon doesn’t look like he wants to talk to anyone right now, and Minho is still trying to impress him with his wits and musical ability. 

He waits until the end of class, until everyone else has left, to sidle up to Seungyoon, who, throughout the class, looked progressively worse. It’s not that he’s got the hots for Seungyoon; the guy looks like he might hurl into the nearest trash bin, so Minho brings the only one in the room over. 

“Seriously, are you okay, Seungyoon-ssi? You can talk to me.” Seungyoon nods, finally taking off his sunglasses. His eyes are red and lined with dark circles. “Are you going to throw up?”

“I already threw up this morning, so hard that I think something ruptured.” Seungyoon starts packing his bag up, taking longer than a person not in a compromised state would. 

“Raw eggs and oyster sauce.”

Seungyoon gives him a look that says his vomiting isn’t done for the day. “Please, just the thought is making me want to cry.”

“Did something happen?”

Seungyoon’s eyebrows furrow for a second before he leans back in his chair, bag forgotten. 

Minho leans against the door, which, propped open with a wooden wedge, opens further until Minho’s centre of gravity is compromised and he almost falls. He coughs to cover it but Seungyoon snorts anyway. 

“Don’t make me laugh, I’m trying to be sad.”

Minho takes a seat next to him. “What’s making you sad?”

Seungyoon doesn’t seem the type to open up easily, so Minho is surprised when he gets a straight answer, though not as surprised at the reason. More like, his heart skips a beat and his idiot brain kicks back into gear with all the stupid ideas he had before he met Seungyoon’s boyfriend of how to get with him. 

“Jiao’s leaving. His visa ran out, and he’s decided not to renew it. He’s going back to China.”

“Oh.” For a minute Minho doesn’t know what to say, but the sentiment “Well, that’s good news for me” features most prominently in his mind, amid the mix of elation and pity and desire. He reaches out and taps Seungyoon’s knee. “Were you dating long?”

“You can’t measure love in time,” Seungyoon says, surprisingly morose, and Minho blinks. “I’m sorry, I just meant—when you know someone, really know them, and love them for every part of themselves, what does it matter how long you know them for?” He sniffs, and Minho thinks that Seungyoon might be crying. Fortunately for Minho, emotional support is one of his strong suits.

“It doesn’t,” he says. “What matters is how you spent that time. If you loved him like that, then it doesn’t matter how long you had together. That kind of love doesn’t have a used-by date.”

Seungyoon sits back in his chair, tilting his head back as if to stop the tears from falling. “I’m not usually like this. I don’t cry in front of people.”

“It’s okay.” Minho takes Seungyoon’s hand and interlaces their fingers, and Seungyoon looks at their joined hands for a few seconds before he squeezes. “You’re going through a rough time. It’s okay to be emotional. Although it’s probably better if you don’t cry in front of the class.”

Seungyoon lets out another laugh, smaller this time, quieter, like he’s laughing at himself, which is better than crying, so Minho counts it as a win. 

“If you want to talk about it, I’m here,” Minho says.

Seungyoon rubs his thumb over Minho’s absentmindedly, clearly still in his head. “Thank you.”

He’s not sure what makes him so brave, since it took nothing to reach out and take Seungyoon’s hand, but he asks, anyway. “Can I buy you a coffee? I would say drink but you look like you’ve had enough.”

Seungyoon’s eyes shine bright in the sunlight flooding in from the windows. It’s too beautiful a day to stay inside. “Sure,” he says, and smiles in a way that has Minho’s heart pounding.

—

Seungyoon is halfway through an anecdote about his first year of university and a frozen chicken incident in his dorm when Minho gets a phone call. He doesn’t want to interrupt, but it’s Jihoon, and Jihoon calls him so rarely these days, he excuses himself to take the call. 

“Hey, man, what’s up?”

“Just calling to chat,” Jihoon says, sounding like there’s something he wants to say but he’s not going to jump straight into it. “Unless this isn’t a good time.”

“It’s a good time.” He looks at Seungyoon, who’s nursing his iced latte that’s more sugar and milk than actual coffee, and says, “I better take this, it’s a friend, I’m sorry,” but Seungyoon waves him off, and Minho gets up from his seat, leaving his half finished cappuccino on the table as he moves to somewhere less crowded. “How is everything going? You’re producing your own albums now, right?”

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk about. I mean, yeah, but. They’re not paying us.”

The news makes Minho pause picking at the stone of the fountain he’s sitting on. “What? Since when?”

“Since ever. They keep saying they will but they haven’t.” Jihoon sounds on edge, anxious and stressed, more stressed than he should be for someone their age. Then again, he is the leader of a successful and moderately well-known idol group, maybe the only maknae leader in the music industry. And then, added onto that, the pressure of not getting paid. 

“What are you guys doing about it?”

“We haven’t decided yet, but it’s been going on long enough that we know we need to do something.”

“Shit,” Minho says, as ten solutions run through his mind, each more ridiculous and undoable as the last. “Okay, I’m going to Jiho now, he’ll know how to sort this out. Stay by your phone, we’ll call you back.”

Minho hangs up and rushes back the table, where Seungyoon’s glancing at him with those eyes, his smile faltering when he realises Minho’s state. “I need to go,” Minho says. “Something urgent just came up and I need to sort it out. I’m sorry to rush off like this.”

Seungyoon waves him off again. “No problem. I hope you get it sorted.”

“Thanks,” Minho says, his mind already gone enough that he doesn’t reschedule with Seungyoon, which he’ll kick himself later for. It only takes twenty minutes to get to Jiho’s, and he pounds on the door until Jiho answers, looking like he’s spent the last few days in his apartment without wandering into the waking world. “We have a problem.” 

After he explains the situation, the first words out of Jiho’s mouth are, “We need to get them a lawyer,” and Minho’s immediately glad he went to Jiho first. They call Jihoon and Jiho talks him down from doing anything drastic until they get the cogs turning with a plan of action, and he listens to everything Jihoon has to say—not getting paid, the terrible conditions, the lack of freedom in their music—without any judgement, without making Jihoon feel bad for not doing anything sooner, and once Jiho’s hung up they all feel better about what’s about to happen.

“You have no idea,” Minho says, taking a seat on Jiho’s bed, “how glad I am that you’re a fully functioning, capable adult who can handle things.”

Jiho shrugs like, that’s what I’m here for, and lies back on the bed. He still looks gorgeous, even with hair ruffled from running his hands through it, probably from annoyance, and like he hasn’t showered today. Minho lies back, too, resting on his elbow to look at Jiho.

“I had coffee with Seungyoon,” he says, even though it’s the wrong thing to say, and he knows it. He shouldn’t be rubbing his crush in Jiho’s face, but there’s a point to this.

“Cool,” Jiho says. “I hope he put out.”

“I’m not that type of guy,” Minho jokes. Jiho looks up at him, something in his eyes that’s maybe hurt and maybe feigned interest. “I still want you,” Minho says, barely getting the words out with how much he feels them. “Is that okay? To want more than one person at the same time. Is that alright?”

“That’s what orgies were invented for,” Jiho says, laughing in a self deprecating kind of way that breaks Minho’s heart just a little bit.

“You know you’re not just a warm body to me, right?” Minho’s feeling brave again, but it’s the least he can be when Jiho means so much to him. “You’re my best friend. I’d do anything for you.”

“Anything? Even not having sex anymore?”

Maybe that’s been in the works for a while now, even if Minho was blind to it, but it still makes his stomach drop like he’s on the T Express. “If that’s what you want.”

Jiho exhales air from his nose, like letting off steam. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want anymore. I want to be able to talk to you like we could before, but it would be talking to you about you. I want it to be simple again.”

Minho shifts over until they’re pressed side to side and lays his head on Jiho’s chest. He can hear his heart pounding, his breath coming in and going out, the aliveness of him like soft grass doused in morning dew, like the sun rising over a mountain. Jiho plays with the short strands of Minho’s hair, tracing the shell of his ear with his fingers, and it’s so intimate and soft Minho feels like he should leave, because he doesn’t deserve it; at the same time, he isn’t going to because he doesn’t want it to end. Jiho should be with someone who feels the same way about him as he does about them, someone worthy of his love. 

“You can talk to me,” Minho says. “About me. You can do that.”

“I miss you,” Jiho says, breathed into the stilted air of the room that smells like sweat and coffee and the lingering traces of sex. Jiho’s sheets smell like them, their sex, even though Minho hasn’t been here in—days, weeks maybe, he can’t keep track—and it’s dirty, but hot at the same time. Either Jiho can’t be bothered washing his sheets, or he wants to keep the memory of them together with him, and both options excite Minho in a way that is entirely inappropriate for the situation. “I want to be with you. I want to touch you, all the time, like this. I want to put my hands on you. I want to kiss you, and taste you. I feel lonely when you’re not around. Is this too much? I can stop.”

Heat curls in Minho belly at both the way Jiho says the words and the words themselves. “No, it’s okay. You can keep going if you want to.”

Jiho sighs, but he’s still stroking Minho’s ear, he hasn’t told Minho to get out yet, to leave him alone, to not come back, and Minho feels close to something, like this is what’s going to push them over the edge, like the beginning of a new development in their friendship, or the end of it. It’s scary to think about, but he has to know what’s going to happen.

“Can we just—stay like this for a while?” Jiho asks, his voice stripped of all safeguards. He’s not doing as good a job of protecting himself as Minho hoped he would. “I just want to—I just want this, for now.”

“Yeah,” Minho says, as Jiho’s heartbeat starts to slow and his breathing becomes less ragged. He doesn’t want to be anywhere else right now, either.


	6. you wanna break my heart, alright

Jiho is such a fucking idiot. They lie there for several silent hours, Minho’s hand under Jiho’s t-shirt and his face pushed into Jiho’s chest, while Jiho cups the back of his neck and rubs his thumb over the short hairs behind his ear. He shouldn’t be doing this, because by doing this, being with Minho like this, holding him like this, he’s just falling deeper in love with him. 

It never used to be like this, not before the morning Minho let himself into Jiho’s apartment, because the door was unlocked from the guy he’d missed out on scoring with the night before with forgetting to lock it as he left, and Jiho was still naked when Minho jumped on him, starfishing all over him and laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. Jiho fell out of bed trying to get out from under him, and they’d been naked around each other before, but Jiho still had morning wood and Minho blushed as he looked away. 

“Sorry, hyung,” he said, still laughing, and Jiho went to piss, willing away his erection so that he could. All of his clothes were in his bedroom or in the washing machine downstairs, so he came back out of the bathroom still naked, to find Minho looking up at him with a curious expression. Jiho didn’t know what it meant until he found a pair of briefs and lay back down on the bed, until Minho rolled on top of him and kissed his neck. 

“What are you doing?” Jiho asked, and even though he knew what Minho was doing, it still took his brain a minute to catch up. His hands came up to Minho’s shoulders, but Jiho didn’t push him away—couldn’t push him away because of the sudden onslaught of feelings he’d kept buried for the last few years of their friendship. 

“I don’t know,” Minho said, kissing along Jiho’s jaw, and, well, that made two of them. His knee settled between Jiho’s with his thigh on Jiho’s crotch, warm through the material of Minho’s pants and the thin cotton of Jiho’s briefs. It was cold outside, almost winter, and cold inside, too, but Minho’s body heat bore down on him and kept him warm. Minho nipped at the skin of Jiho’s jaw, and it was all Jiho could do just to let it happen. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” Jiho said, because what else could he say to the fantasies he’d been having for months now, curling them inside himself like a cat in the sun, acting them out with whoever came his way before burying them again? Nothing. He could say nothing else except, “More, give me more.” 

Minho finally kissed his mouth, and it was bad in some ways, but good in the others. Minho wasn’t a very good kisser but it didn’t matter, because he was kissing Jiho, for once, for the first time, and Jiho was kissing back. He tasted like breath mints hiding the hint of his two morning cigarettes, but as long as it was just the taste and not the smoke Jiho found it bearable. He liked it a little bit, but only because it was Minho.

They kissed for several minutes until Jiho grabbed him around the waist and rolled them over until he was on top, and could look at Minho, really look at him as not just an object of his own affection but a real, living, breathing person who wanted to kiss Jiho enough that he actually did it.

“Is this too much?” Minho asked, which was sweet and foolish, so out of his depth he was, so oblivious to what Jiho felt for him. 

“More,” Jiho repeated, and kissed him again. They were content to just kiss that first time, no urgency to it, touching each other in the places they were softest, Minho laughing softly when Jiho dug his fingers into his side, tugging at the skin of Jiho’s earlobe, Jiho touching the inside of Minho’s elbow. He couldn’t articulate what it meant to him to be doing this, and he knew if he did it would just freak Minho out, so they took it slow, at first, kissing for weeks and ignoring how hard they were every time they did and only jerking off after they’d left each other, until they finally got each other off, in the backseat of Jiho’s car, at midnight when they were parked by the water, the dim overhead light from the roof of the car throwing Minho’s features into sharp relief. It wasn’t much more than a mad scramble of hands and teeth and lips on each other’s skin, Minho’s foot kicking at the window as he came, Jiho’s knee lodged in between the seats; it had nothing to do with finesse, but they did it, and then they laughed about it, Minho saying, “We’ll get it right.”

“It felt right to me,” Jiho said, and Minho looked at him, really looked at him, as if he was seeing him for the first time and liked what he saw.

It was just as easy after that to be friends as it ever was between them. It was better, really, because they now shared something on a level they couldn’t reach before. They learned more about each other in the following months, like how Minho liked to be touched, and how Jiho liked to be kissed, and the spots they could press to make each other feel good, in Jiho’s bed and Jiho’s kitchen, in the bathrooms of their favourite bars, and every so often Minho’s dorm when he got the chance to be alone, and sometimes even when he didn’t. 

Jiho doesn’t know when it turned into something more than just handjobs between classes and sucking each other off when they have nothing better to do into this, into feelings he could no longer bury, into the intimacy of two people who care about each other sharing space and time and breath but aren’t together, and Minho must know, by know, he has to know that Jiho is so into him it clenches his chest and makes rational decisions difficult. He must know that this—lying here together, Jiho spilling his secrets into the air between them like it’s his last chance for redemption—means that it’s even harder for him to separate his feelings from what they do with each other when no one else is looking. Jiho thought he could handle it, but he can’t. He can’t pull himself away, either. He has to rely on Minho’s mercy for that, but Minho doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want to stop, but he doesn’t want to be with Jiho, and that’s the worst part.

“I think I should go,” Minho says, hours after the sun has gone down and it’s just them alone in a room in the dark. He rolls onto his back and Jiho immediately misses the contact. “I think you’re right, we shouldn’t do this anymore. Have sex, at least. It’s getting too serious. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Jiho huffs out a laugh. “I think we’re way past that.”

“Don’t. Don’t say that. You don’t mean it.” Minho sounds so hurt, and fuck, that’s not what Jiho was going for. He’s always been so open and honest about his feelings, which is part of the reason Jiho can read him so well, and how he knows that Minho doesn’t feel the same way about him. “You know I love you, right? You’re my best friend.”

Jiho can’t make out Minho’s expression in the dark, but he knows it’s earnest from the sound of his voice. “Yeah,” Jiho says, “but you should go.”

Minho gets up after a minute, but stops at the doorway without saying anything. Eventually, he goes, leaving Jiho alone.

—

The next day, Jiho washes his sheets. He cleans up his apartment and leaves the sliding door to the balcony open so light and clean air can filter in. He puts his textbooks away for a day, closes down his computer, and meditates. He rests his body and his mind. He goes to the markets and at seven o’clock he cooks dinner, something with lots of vegetables and rice, something filling. 

That night, he gets a knock on his door, and he’s expecting Minho, or Kyung maybe, ready to chew his ear off about some new scientific breakthrough he’s read about. He’s not expecting Seungyoon.

“I hope you don’t think it’s creepy, but I got your address from the school database.”

For a minute Jiho is too shocked to reply. “Uh. Do you want to—come in?” He steps aside but Seungyoon lingers in the doorway. 

“I broke up with Jiao,” Seungyoon says. He’s wearing a pressed shirt and slacks and looks amazing for someone who recently ended a relationship. “He’s going back to China so we decided to break up.”

“That’s a shame,” Jiho says, even while he’s thinking of how good the news will be for Minho. “You two seemed like a good fit for each other.”

Seungyoon nods, but he doesn’t look that upset about it. Jiho opens the door wider and he steps in, brushing past Jiho lightly and smelling like he put effort into looking this good. “Are you going somewhere tonight?”

Seungyoon shakes his head. “No, I came over to see you. But you’re eating dinner, I should go.” He doesn’t make a move to leave though. 

Jiho closes the door and steps forward, reaching out without actually touching Seungyoon. He’s not sure if he should close the distance, if Seungyoon coming over means they’re closer, now. “Please, stay. Eat with me. It’s nice to have company.”

“I was under the impression you have a lot of friends,” Seungyoon says.

Jiho shrugs. “They get busy.”

“And Minho?”

“We’re not attached at the hip. He’s probably at Soultree getting fucked up and dancing with seven girls at once.”

Seungyoon looks surprised at that, and takes a seat when Jiho motions to the table. “Oh? He’s not gay?”

“No,” Jiho says, laughing at the thought of Minho limiting himself in any way. “He’s not gay, he ‘likes people, not genders’.”

“And you?”

Jiho shrugs again. He stirs the curry on the stove, lowering the heat, taking the rice and side dishes over to the table. “I like girls, and boys, and people.”

“I like girls, but mostly in a romantic sense. I think I like the idea of them, their perfume, the softness of their skin.” Seungyoon takes the bowl of curry Jiho offers him. “But I don’t sleep with them.”

They talk as they eat, and it’s easy to make conversation with Seungyoon, who is as much of a people-person as Jiho isn’t, and Jiho takes the time to just listen to the lilt of Seungyoon’s voice as he talks about his new favourite musicals and how he finally saw _The Goddess Is Watching_ on the stage. He spots the beat-up acoustic guitar in the corner of Jiho’s living room that Jiho hasn’t touched in years, and when they’ve finished eating Seungyoon sits on the couch and pulls it into his lap, tuning it by ear before he starts strumming. 

His voice when he starts singing makes the hairs on Jiho’s arms stand up from how powerful and clean it is. He can’t understand the lyrics but he listens in awe anyway, soaking in the atmosphere of the show Seungyoon’s putting on, and the way he smiles when he looks up to find Jiho staring at him.

“Woah,” Jiho says. “You’re amazing.”

Seungyoon laughs, still plucking the strings with his fingers in a soft melody. “I’m a music teacher, it would be pretty poor of me to not know how to play music.”

“You could be famous with a voice like that.”

“I almost went on Super Star K,” Seungyoon admits, “when I was sixteen. But, I didn’t think my voice was good enough. And I wanted to go to university anyway, once I tested out of high school. I knew it would be harder for me if I was famous to be the teacher I wanted to be, that it would only distract me.”

Jiho nods as Seungyoon tells him this. “I actually felt the same way, sort of. I figured it would be easier to go to university and learn more about music now than it would be if I joined a company. This way I can start out better than if I’d just dove straight in.”

“Makes sense,” Seungyoon says. He puts the guitar back and while he’s standing he takes a look at Jiho’s bookshelf, a tiny thing that’s mostly made up of textbooks and some poetry. He picks out an anthology and flicks to a random page. 

“Today I will plant a flower  
on a corner of the shadow  
where I got to know you;  
when the flower grows to bloom,  
all the distress that stemmed from our acquaintance  
will turn into petals and fly away.”

It sounds better in Seungyoon’s deep voice than it does in Jiho’s head or his own voice when he’s put it to a melody. 

“Mah Jonggi,” Jiho says. 

“I have to admit, I would not have thought of you as a poetry kind of guy.” Seungyoon grins sheepishly, like it was a mistake on his behalf. 

“It gives me inspiration for lyrics, and sometimes when I can’t think of anything I’ll just make melodies for the verses.”

Seungyoon looks at him for a minute, long enough that Jiho thinks he’s done something wrong, before he puts the book down and comes over to Jiho where he’s sitting on the couch. Jiho wants to ask what he’s doing but it becomes pretty clear when Seungyoon kneels next to him and swings his other leg over to sit in Jiho’s lap. His hands instinctively come up to grip Seungyoon’s hips, bunching in his expensive, tailored shirt, while Seungyoon’s rest on his shoulders, and another minute passes where they just look at each other, the tension building as Jiho’s heartbeat picks up speed.

One of Seungyoon’s hands lifts and he brings it to Jiho’s face, his thumb brushing Jiho’s bottom lip, and Jiho can’t help himself, not after wanting to do this for so long: he fists the front of Seungyoon’s shirt and pulls him down until their mouths meet. Seungyoon gasps quietly, as if maybe he didn’t expect Jiho to be the one to kiss first, but he deepens it, sucking Jiho’s bottom lip into his mouth, licking his way inside. It’s exciting in the way all new hook-ups are, and Seungyoon is good at kissing, as good as he is at teaching and singing and playing the guitar and making conversation. With lips that soft and full, it would be a shame if he didn’t know how to use them. 

It turns heated with Seungyoon’s hand on Jiho’s jaw and Jiho pushing his hands under Seungyoon’s shirt. In another few minutes, Seungyoon starts to grind down, getting Jiho worked up, signalling what exactly it is that he wants.

When Seungyoon does pull back, it’s to say, “Take me to bed,” and it’s almost unbearable what the heat in his eyes does to Jiho. Jiho does, backing him into the bedroom while they kiss more, pushing him onto the bed and following him down. It doesn’t take long for the clothes to come off, and for Jiho to reach for the lube, and for Seungyoon to settle between his knees, and to push in, and. Jiho can feel the stretch of how thick Seungyoon’s cock is, and his back bows with the pleasure of it, Seungyoon opening him up, hitting the spot inside him that makes him moan. Seungyoon pushes Jiho’s knees up to get in deeper, to fuck him better, the way Jiho’s needed to be fucked since Minho’s mouth was on his neck, and it’s only then that he thinks about Minho, and the deal that they made, and how if Seungyoon wanted Minho Jiho would back down, but Jiho never thought he would actually be with Seungyoon first—be with Seungyoon before Minho was, or be with Seungyoon before he was with Minho. It might be a betrayal, but Jiho’s not going to stop, because maybe, after everything, he deserves this, too.


	7. we've been hanging around for the longest time

Seungyoon tags along to their next gig, and Minho figures Jiho invited him, because Minho hasn’t seen him since the date they didn’t finish—if he could call it a date, since Seungyoon ended a relationship the day before. Minho’s not going to try to rush into things, but he takes it as a good sign that Seungyoon doesn’t hold anything against him, and maybe he’s warming up to them now. 

He feels so close to Jiho on stage, their bodies moving in tandem to the beat, and thanks whoever’s looking over him that even if they can’t have sex anymore, can’t lie in the same bed without the atmosphere turning tense and Minho leaving when it gets too weird, then at least they have this. He wants what Jiho wants, for it to go back to when it was simpler, when they could be together and talk without having to skirt around subjects that verge on complicated and make them uncomfortable. He almost wishes they could go back to before they were sleeping together—before Jiho would tease Minho by talking about how hot they’d be together, how much Jiho had learned over the past year about sex, how good he was at it now, jokingly, would Minho like to find out?—but he knows it’s better to know and have it taken away from him than to have his questions unanswered.

Now that he’s listening to Jiho’s lyrics, really listening, he hears what he thought had been directed at Seungyoon—longing and passion and guilt, the kind of guilt that Minho wants to save him from, but can’t.

They go out for drinks afterwards, and Minho is concerned when Seungyoon reveals he’s not much of a drinker, and can’t handle alcohol that well, even more concerned when Seungyoon drinks a bit too much and they have to take him home. Or, rather, take him back to Jiho’s place to let him sleep it off. 

“This isn’t too weird for you?” Minho asks, after they’ve tucked Seungyoon in with a bottle of water and some burupen. “Having our tutor passed out in your bed?”

Jiho shrugs and doesn’t quite meet Minho’s eyes. “I’ll just sleep on the couch. He’ll probably be gone by the time I wake up, anyway. He said he’s got a class tomorrow pretty early.”

“If you say so,” Minho says, and then the awkward silence presses in between them. Minho should go home and sleep—it’s 1am and he has an early class tomorrow as well—but he doesn’t want to. Jiho’s leaning against the door frame watching Seungyoon sleep, and Minho’s chest starts to constrict at the sight. He doesn’t know where the feeling comes from, or what it’s trying to tell him, but it’s on the tail-end of it that he pushes at Jiho’s shoulder to turn him around and crowds into him, pressing his face into Jiho’s neck while his fingers hook into the pouch of Jiho’s hoodie.

“Minho, what—”

“I miss you,” Minho says into Jiho’s skin. He smells good, a mix of beer coming out of his pores and aftershave lingering under his jaw. Minho presses his mouth there, not kissing, not licking, just—feeling him. “I can’t deal with this. I’m sorry I can’t be the person you need me to be.”

“It’s not about that,” Jiho says. He’s not pushing Minho away, and Minho feels guilty about that too, that maybe Jiho wants to but can’t. “I don’t want you to be someone you’re not. But you can’t keep doing this to me, this hot-and-cold thing. You want me but you don’t. You want to fuck me, but you don’t want to be with me. It’s maddening. I can’t handle the way you’re treating me, it’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry,” Minho says, but he doesn’t move away. He can feel a hot prickle behind his eyes, and he should go before he actually starts crying like a loser, because what does he have to cry about? He’s not the one being jerked around and used. He’s the jerk. He’s doing this _to_ Jiho, and Jiho’s right, it’s not fair. “I’ll stop, I’m sorry.”

It’s one of the hardest things Minho’s ever done to push himself away and leave Jiho there, but he does it, and it’s only afterwards, after he gets drunk and hooks up with an English girl who has lips just as full as Seungyoon’s and tattoos up her arms, after he wakes up in her apartment with no real memories of the morning after 2am aside from kissing her under the streetlights, the way he can’t do with Jiho, it’s only then that he feels the crushing weight of what he’s done and how badly he’s fucked everything up.

—

Minho’s failing most of his history subjects. He’s almost failed a few of his music subjects, too, but mostly that’s because the classes are poorly run and the assignments and exams usually have nothing to do with what they’re being taught. Mostly, though, it’s because he doesn’t care. He’s got a 1.7 GPA and more tracks he’s made than songs he’s paid with his own money for. He’s come to accept that formal education just isn’t for him—not because he can’t do it, but because he doesn’t want to. The only time he feels good anymore is when he’s on stage, with Jiho beside him and Seungyoon in the crowd, hearing everyone in the club chanting along to their songs. 

Jiho doesn’t seem to get that. He’s content to study, because he’s good at it, because he likes it, and do music on the side, in the middle of the night instead of first thing in morning like Minho does—when he gets up in the morning, when he can make it out of bed a couple hours before classes and work on his songs. Music is his life blood, but it’s not the same for Jiho; they were both born crying to a syncopated beat, but Jiho’s more chill about it, somehow. Minho cares about Jiho so much that he followed him to university, but they could be where Jihoon is now—struggling, sure, but living their best lives, being on stage, making music for larger audiences than whoever turns up at the club or buys their mixtapes. 

He needs to do something with the frenetic energy that’s building under his skin. He calls his friends up under the promise of paying for their meal and getting something started. Jinkyung looks less than impressed about the radio silence for the last four years, but Hyuntae, Jiseok and Hoyoung don’t seem to mind. Even Kyung tags along, but as he explains, it’s just for the free lunch.

“I haven’t rapped since I got to university,” he says, digging through the stew for chunks of chicken. “I’ve lost my edge and passion for it, now that I can build artificial organisms.”

“You’re such a nerd. Just how smart are you?” Jinkyung asks, more an accusation than a question. 

“How much plastic surgery have you had?” Kyung counters, and Hoyoung makes a noise to egg them on, says, “Oh, snap,” while Jinkyung flips her hair over her shoulder.

“Maybe I can’t splice DNA, but at least I look good.”

“Guys,” Minho says, trying to be placating, but he’s missed this, this easy banter between friends, Hyuntae’s jokes and Jinkyung’s temperament and Jiseok’s laugh and Hoyoung riling everyone up. “Who’s in?”

Hoyoung grins. “I’m never too busy for you, Minho-yah. Let’s do it.”

Jinkyung begrudgingly agrees—she might be sore about getting eliminated from the show, but she says it’s better in a crew than going solo all the time—and Hyuntae is always up for it, that’s one of the things Minho loves about him.

“I’d love to, but I need to work on my own shit,” Jiseok says, “I’ve got something big coming up next year and I need to prepare.”

“Alright, man,” Minho says, “you do what you gotta do. Eat up, though, it’s on me.”

The rest of the day passes quickly enough, the six of them eating and drinking well into the afternoon, making plans to record in a couple days’ time, getting tipsy to the point of being drunk, joking, laughing. It’s the best Minho’s felt in what seems like ages. He leaves feeling buoyed by the atmosphere, still a little drunk even though he stopped drinking hours ago. 

When he gets back to his dorm he opens his laptop, but stops before he opens up any songs. He’s not in the mood to compose, he’s not even in the mood to listen to anything he’s working on. Instead, he opens Google and types in his name. His Royal Class crew comes up, with videos of him performing on stage, and others, with Jiho, the gig they did the day before, articles about up and coming underground rappers, and from there it’s an easy step to the message boards he used to be on, his and Jiho’s old blogs where they would post their mixtapes and send messages to each other. 

It catches his eye as he’s scrolling through—something he posted, seemingly apropos of nothing, _To Zico God_ , and the feelings he felt when he was seventeen and hearing Jiho’s lyrics for the first time come rushing back. 

_To Zico God_  
_I respect you so much… Your rhyme, flow, beat…_  
_Your lyrics are amazing, I feel like I’m seeing the resurrection of Tupac_  
_Please teach me your ways, have your way with me_  
_Bbooing bbooing_

Minho leans back in his chair as he digests his own words. _Have your way with me_. He wrote that, and he was eighteen. Did he feel it even then, what he feels now, wanting Jiho so badly his chest feels as though it could cave in on itself, as if there’s a hole at the centre of him that no amount of food or alcohol or sex with other people can fill? He can’t remember. He can barely remember what he felt a month ago. _I respect you so much_. All he knows is what he feels now, but, judging from what he wrote, it’s possible he wanted Jiho back then, and, if he did, he was obvious about it. In retrospect it seems inevitable that they would get together, by the way they would act with each other, how unsurprised their friends were when they realised Jiho and Minho had started sleeping together, how they constantly gravitate towards each other. It’s just—it’s not love. If he was in love, wouldn’t he feel good? Love is a feeling that people want more of—at least, that’s what he’s been told. It’s a good feeling.

Minho doesn’t feel good, not when it comes to Jiho. Insatiable, and desperate, and like he’s going out of his mind, but none of that is anything he wants to keep feeling. 

—

Jinkyung kicks of the recording with her, “Yo, yo, yo, this is Jolly V,” after Hoyoung’s won the fight over who’s arranging the track and the rest of them sit back to listen. She’s definitely gotten better, tighter flow, better rhymes, and Minho’s proud of her, like a brother would be of his sister, proud and happy they finally get a chance to do this again. She only needs three takes before Hoyoung raises a fist, shouts, “We got it!”, and Jinkyung floats out of the studio like she’s walking on air. 

Hyuntae’s up next, and then Minho follows, taking over when Hoyoung steps in to record, and it’s so easy and fluid between the four of them, such a balance between their personalities that Minho misses more than he loves anything else. The last two days, the whole weekend, spent in the campus studio writing and now recording have been a break from the mess his life has become. He thinks about the academic warning he was emailed yesterday morning, and how he’s probably not going to do anything about it, and how disappointed his parents are going to be when he drops out. Rapping is the only thing he wants to be doing, and he’s already made up his mind about it. He just has to find a way to tell Jiho without it seeming like Minho’s abandoning him.

The track sounds good when they listen to it, like all the work Minho’s put in to music over the last few years while he should have been studying is paying off, and their styles compliment each other well, Jinkyung venting everything she felt after _Show Me The Money_ , the lyrical quality of Hoyoung’s voice, Hyuntae’s power and deep tone, and Minho’s laid back feel. It sounds like exactly the type of song Minho needed to make to affirm his choices in pursuing music as a career. He knows where he wants to go, and now he just has to figure out how to get there.

They end up in Hongdae again, sharing plates of seafood, and while Minho buys a bottle of wine for the table, he only drinks coke; he can feel everything that’s happened in the last few years coming to a close, and he wants to lean into that feeling. He wants to live in it.

“I’m thinking of joining a company,” Minho says, somewhere between them finishing the braised octopus and the bottle of wine.

“Like a label? Like AOMG?” Hyuntae asks. His nose has gone red from the wine, which he barely touched, and the soju, which he’s on his second bottle of.

“No, like YG.”

Jinkyung gives him a look that says she’s not impressed. “You want to be an idol? Really?”

Minho shrugs. “Idols get a bad rep.”

“Well, you’d be the only one with talent,” Jinkyung says. “So, if you want to dance around a stage in colour-coordinated outfits with people who can barely match pitch, that’s your call.”

“Minho’s right,” Hoyoung says, which surprises him. “Those two idol boys, those trainees, they’re doing pretty well right now. Better than you, Jinkyung.”

She rolls her eyes, but can’t say anything to that. She was knocked out, and they’ve survived so far. If Minho participated, as an idol or an underground rapper, he’d beat out all the competition, he’s that sure of himself. Everyone except Jiho.

“Jihoon’s an idol now. A leader, too. He’s probably the best idol rapper in the music industry.”

“Nothing against Jihoon,” Jinkyung says, and Minho braces himself, “but that’s a low bar. Of course he’s the best one, he’s Jihoon. He and Hanhae have more talent individually than the rest of them have put together.”

“I just thought,” Minho says, and he doesn’t know why he’s being so honest, even with his friends, “that I could use some training, real training. Also, having the backing power of a company like that, like YG or SM, means I would get to reach even more people.” To show them what I’m made of, he doesn’t add. 

“You’d get paid pretty well for it, too,” Hyuntae jokes, and Minho has to agree.

Jinkyung makes another comment about idols and Minho lets it go, so that they leave without any hurt feelings when they finish their meal. It’s the last they see of each other for awhile, and Minho knows it will be when he says goodbye, even if he doesn’t know it consciously. He doesn’t let the feeling overwhelm him as he takes the subway back to campus. He veers off and heads towards Jiho’s, as easy a trail to follow as any he’s ever walked, and nervousness starts to creep into his mind. He doesn’t know how Jiho will take what he has to say, but they’ve been friends so long, Minho knows Jiho will support him.

He takes a breath before he knocks to get himself together, but when the door opens, all nervousness leaves him and is replaced by something worse, a deep kind of hurt at seeing Seungyoon in the doorway, his bare chest covered in marks and his lips swollen as if he’s just been kissing someone. 

“Oh,” Seungyoon says, looking neither surprised nor unsurprised. He takes a step back and opens the door wider. “You should come in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mino did actually post that when he was seventeen and, on the internet, where people could read it http://hugeboymino.tumblr.com/post/11101883869/title-to-zico-god-written-by-song-minho 
> 
> im still on twitter i just changed my handle... now [ZKM93](http://twitter.com/ZKM93)


	8. i like every single thing about you

Seungyoon doesn’t go to class that morning. He calls in sick to nurse his hangover and spends the time resting in Jiho’s bed while Jiho cooks breakfast and brings it to him. Eating in bed reminds him of when Minho comes over and they have pizza or omelettes or fried chicken and Minho invariably gets it all over the sheets, and then some on Jiho when they kiss and start to fool around, tasting like grease and beer. He tries not to dwell on those thoughts, and instead watches Seungyoon pick at the food, which he reluctantly eats while he looks like he might throw up.

“You don’t have to,” Jiho says, laughing a little.

“I’m starving though,” Seungyoon says, eating the smallest of portions at a time. “I just can’t stomach it. I’m sorry, it’s not your cooking, you’re a decent enough cook.”

“Don’t hold back on the compliments.”

Seungyoon looks pretty miserable and elects to spend the rest of the morning in Jiho’s bed while Jiho works on his songs with his headphones in so as not to disturb his company. By the time lunch time comes, Seungyoon has perked up a bit more, and eats a normal amount of food.

“I’m sorry that I’m eating all of your food, I know what a student living wage is.”

Jiho shrugs, picking through the bowls of food. “I get enough from paying gigs that it doesn’t bother me, and mum pays my rent. You can stay the whole weekend, if getting out of bed is going to be a problem for you.”

Seungyoon gives him a heated look, and Jiho’s starting to pick up on it better, those kinds of looks. “You want to keep me here all weekend in your bed?”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

Seungyoon reaches out to pull Jiho in for a kiss that’s sweet and soft and takes like chilli sauce. It’s fun, with Seungyoon, because there are no strings and no feelings; it’s far from what he has with Minho—had with Minho—and it’s cathartic, in a way, to be able to fuck someone he knows without it getting complicated. When Seungyoon deepens the kiss, Jiho breaks off for a minute to put the food on the floor while Seungyoon laughs and then climbs into his lap. Somewhere between the night and the morning he took off his clothes, and his skin feels heated and soft under Jiho’s hands, his dick hardening in the soft patch of hair the more Jiho touches him. 

“Just to be clear,” Jiho says, as Seungyoon kisses down his jaw, “you’re only using me to get over your ex, right?”

Seungyoon hums into Jiho’s skin, nipping at the soft skin of Jiho’s earlobe. “I could lie, if that makes you feel better.”

“It won’t.”

Seungyoon goes back to kissing his mouth, tugging at Jiho’s shirt to lift it over his head, and Jiho’s okay with being used, as long as it’s just for fun, as long as he doesn’t get in over his head again. After a respectable amount of foreplay that Jiho doesn’t really need, when Seungyoon is this attractive and he’s still thinking about Minho, Seungyoon rolls him sideways and takes him out of his sweats while Jiho takes Seungyoon into his mouth, sucking each other, coming into each other’s mouths. Seungyoon knows what he’s doing, and he’s kind enough to swallow, whereas Jiho spits into a used tissue on his bedside table. It’s not that he’s averse to the taste, it’s just that—he’s used to Minho. It’s embarrassing, but he’s barely slept with anyone else over the last few months—between Minho and classes and making tracks, he hasn’t had time, and the irony of that he’s pushed other people to the side to make more room for Minho in his life to the point that he’s taken over it isn’t lost on Jiho. Seungyoon is a welcome distraction for him from the cycle of study, Minho, more study, music, Minho, study, Minho, more study, music that he’s caught up in, and he lies in his bed while his breath returns to normal and Seungyoon takes a shower, listening to him sing over the sound of rushing water hitting tile and glass. 

Seungyoon emerges half an hour later still naked and wet and Jiho’s tempted to pull him into bed again, but gives him some clothes—a shirt that’s baggy on Jiho and four sizes too big for Seungyoon, and a pair of shorts with a belt so they don’t fall down—and they lie watching tv for a couple hours, in comfortable, companionable silence, broken only by a flippant comment about which idol they’d want to collaborate with or who’s the best actor in whatever drama is currently playing.

“It’s weird,” Seungyoon says, “to not be in a relationship anymore. I’ve spent the last two years with Jiao, and now I’m alone.”

“Maybe that’s what you need,” Jiho says, while Seungyoon plays with his fingers. Jiho turns on his side to listen while Seungyoon stays sitting up against the headboard. “Some time by yourself.”

“I think I just need to sleep with a lot of people,” Seungyoon says, laughing hard enough that it shows the chip in his tooth. “It would probably be easier if I went to clubs.”

“What about Minho? He’s desperate to get with you.” Jiho’s never considered himself an exclusive person, so it would be controlling and possessive of him to demand anyone he’s with to be exclusive. Plus, he and Minho aren’t sleeping together anymore, so the least he could do is throw Minho a bone, figuratively speaking.

“I think I might like him more than that, to just rush into sleeping with him.” Seungyoon’s voice is so lovely to listen to that Jiho considers falling asleep while he talks. “And I’m still in love with Jiao. I’m still sore from losing him. Not that I don’t like you—”

Jiho laughs, opening his eyes to see the blush across Seungyoon’s cheeks. “It’s okay. I’m allergic to feelings right now anyway.”

“Because of you and Minho? Or are you still pretending you’re ‘just friends’?”

“Well, we are actually back to just being friends, now. But yeah.”

Seungyoon looks at him curiously before asking, “Your idea or his?”

Jiho sighs, says, “Both. Mine. I don’t know. I was—getting in too deep.” He suddenly can’t bear to look at the kindness in Seungyoon’s eyes, because it looks too much like pity to him.

“You’re in love with him.”

It would be easier for Jiho if everyone in his life was as perceptive as Minho, who can barely figure out what he’s thinking himself let alone what anyone else is. “Unfortunately for me.”

Seungyoon hasn’t let go of Jiho’s fingers, and it’s sad that he craves the contact even as he wants to reject it. “Because he doesn’t feel the same way?” 

“Even if he did feel the same, I don’t know how to go from ‘I want to suck you off right here in the library’ to ‘I want to hold your hand in public’.”

“You just say that,” Seungyoon says, as if it’s that simple.

“What, really?”

“Yeah, you just say, ‘I want to hold your hand in public’.”

Jiho considers this for a moment, before deciding that it wouldn’t go so well. “I think he might—like me as more than a friend, more than a fuck, even if it isn’t love. But until he realises that himself, there’s nothing I can do.”

“You could beat him over the head with a giant mallet until he realises.”

“He loves cartoonish violence, he’s always watching Spongebob Squarepants.”

It’s nice having someone to talk to about this, because he can’t talk to Minho. Things have been so tense between them lately, and even while they try to push through the awkwardness like shoving twelve adult clowns into a Kia, it’s always there, always messing up their rhythm when they make a comment that’s too close to the things they aren’t saying. 

It’s still only Friday, and Seungyoon doesn’t show any signs that he wants to leave anytime soon. They lounge around in bed for the rest of the day, trading stories about their first few years at university, how Seungyoon became a tutor last year, while he was still at university, because his grades were so high.

“People think I’m a genius,” he says, not boasting, just telling the truth, “but I just put effort into everything I do. I’ve been playing the guitar since I could pick one up, and singing for just as long. I started learning about music history in high school, and it’s become a passion of mine. It’s just about practice.”

Jiho can agree with that. “I knew I always wanted to make music, and now I am, even if it’s not for a label. I know I’ll get there, I just want to slow it down.”

“What are you working on right now?” They’re lying in bed facing each other like closed parentheses, speaking as softly as they want to, with no need to make unnecessary noise or movement. “Can I hear something?”

Jiho leans over the side of the bed to grab his laptop and puts it between them. “This one—it’s actually a song I wrote about you. Minho made this comment that we look alike, and it inspired me. It’s not as good quality as if I was with a label, but the school resources are still pretty good.”

“What’s it called?”

“‘I Am You, You Are Me’.”

As the song plays a smile spreads across Seungyoon’s face, and he starts singing along to the chorus the second time it plays. “You have a nice voice,” he says, reaching out to stroke Jiho’s bottom lip like he did the first time. “And, I don’t know much about rap, but your rhythm is good and your tone is nice to listen to. If you had joined a company even a few years ago, you would have been really popular. Even now, I can see your colour.”

Jiho blushes under the compliments and instead of responding bites down lightly on Seungyoon’s finger. This starts another round of kissing that quickly devolves into fooling around, Seungyoon’s hand down Jiho’s sweats while Jiho works on his belt, sucking marks into his neck that bloom immediately. 

“I bruise easily,” Seungyoon says, when Jiho points this out, after they’ve shed their clothes and Seungyoon presses him into the bed with his body weight, “so be gentle with me.”

Jiho doesn’t want to be anything but gentle with him, and goes easily when Seungyoon turns him over, getting on his hands and knees for Seungyoon to push in, gasping as he does. 

“How do you want it?”

Jiho takes a minute to adjust to how thick Seungyoon is, his head hanging between his shoulders. “Hard, fast. Just—give it to me.”

Seungyoon does, starting a rhythm that’s as punishing as it is satisfying, fucking Jiho so well he has to hold onto the bedhead. It feels so good Jiho can’t help but laugh, gasping again when Seungyoon hits his prostate, and it’s different to how Jiho imagines it would be with Minho. Minho loves to talk during, even when he’s got Jiho’s dick in his mouth, and loves to hear what Jiho has to say even when it’s just mindless dirty talk about what Minho’s doing to him, and it would probably be slow, and sweet, and passionate, Jiho unable to hold back what he’s feeling and letting it spill out of his mouth. It’s a good thing they haven’t fucked like that, because it would scare Minho off him completely, or worse, encourage him to keep going, to keep coming over and fucking Jiho until it grew so much more complicated and ended messy. Not that it isn’t already messy, but at least their friendship is mostly intact.

It doesn’t take Jiho long to orgasm once Seungyoon reaches around to take him in hand, pumping him until he comes over Seungyoon’s hand and the pillows. He fucks Jiho through it, saying, “I’m close,” before Jiho stops him. 

“Wait. Pull out.”

Seungyoon does, and Jiho rolls over onto his back, tugging at his hand until he gets the idea and leans over, stroking himself until he spills onto Jiho’s neck, cheeks, mouth, his chest pieces. Jiho finds he doesn’t mind the taste now, licking what he can reach with his tongue.

“Fuck,” Seungyoon says, leaning further down to kiss Jiho again, “that’s so hot. How are you still single?”

“Because I only go for the emotionally unavailable types.” As he says it, he realises how true it is. Minho’s probably never going to get on Jiho’s level; even if he did feel what Jiho feels, it would take him an age to realise it, and Jiho has to weigh up whether he’s willing to wait that long. It might be worth it, if Minho doesn’t get too scared, if he’s brave enough to take on the challenge of a relationship that lasts more than six weeks, but it’s not looking likely that he will. Jiho doesn’t know what his other options are: he could keep fucking around with Seungyoon, if they can stand to be around each other once the excitement of whatever they’re doing now has worn off, or play the field again, but both of those sound so depressing he’d rather be celibate. “I’m looking for the real thing,” he says, “and I haven’t found it yet.”

—

They wake up the next morning, tacky and sore, and the first thing Jiho does is drag Seungyoon into the shower with him, even though he refuses to open his eyes for the first ten minutes. The hot water feels good on his muscles, as do Seungyoon’s delicate hands, but his knees start to hurt after fifteen minutes of rimming Seungyoon with the water rushing over them and his kneecaps on the tile. It’s worth it when Seungyoon comes with a shout and afterwards jerks Jiho off, the water washing away the evidence their bodies keep.

It’s a great start to another morning of doing nothing but eating and watching tv and taking breaks to fuck in various positions and various places around Jiho’s apartment, and when the day is over and they wake up on Sunday, they do it all over again. 

The knock at the door comes around 2pm, as Seungyoon is getting ready to leave, and Jiho’s too lazy to open it. He hears Seungyoon say, “You should come in,” and looks up to see an expression on Minho’s face that makes Jiho feel as though he’s swallowed a pile of rocks. He gets up off the couch, pulling on a pair of pants and the shirt he’d abandoned that morning after they’d come back from the markets, and moves towards Minho with a hand stretched out in a placating gesture. He should’ve know Minho would find out, but he was stupid, and horny, and having the best sex of his life.

“Minho,” he says, and Minho looks between them as he walks further into the apartment, taking stock of everything: the clothes strewn everywhere, the half-empty bottle of lube on the table, the state of the bedsheets. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

Minho scoffs. “Would you have tried to hide it if you did? This—whatever’s going on. You two hooking up. I take it it’s not a recent thing?”

“It is actually,” Seungyoon says. He puts on his shirt, washed that morning, and buttons it up, while the two of them watch him.

“Did you just spend the whole weekend fucking, then?”

Jiho shrugs. “It’s not anything you wouldn’t have done. It’s not anything we haven’t done before. Look,” he starts, and then Seungyoon interrupts.

“I was just leaving. If you two could,” he says, as he stops at the door to put his shoes on, “refrain from saying anything, I might be able to keep my job. I’ll see you both in class.”

Minho watches Seungyoon leave before he rounds on Jiho. “What the fuck, dude? Is this some sort of revenge? You can’t have me so you go after the only guy I want?”

Jiho rolls his eyes. “Contrary to what you think, not everything revolves around you. Seungyoon just wanted something to help him get over Jiao. I just happened to be here. It’s not anything serious.”

“Oh,” Minho says, his defenses dropping almost immediately. “Well, I’m sorry for your sake it’s not serious, even though I would be pissed at you if it was, because you didn’t tell me. You deserve someone good in your life.”

Jiho is taken aback at the sentiment. “It’s okay, it’s not—this thing with you and me has kind of done me in, so I don’t think I could handle anything serious right now.”

“Yeah,” Minho says, and he sounds sorry to hear it. “At least, with Seungyoon, you have someone to—make it okay? Is that what it is? A distraction?”

“Yeah, it’s. Yeah, that.” The awkwardness settles over them again like a fog that Jiho can’t see a way through. “Minho, I think we—”

“I actually came over to tell you something.” Minho shuffles his feet, shoves his hands into his pockets. He kind of looks ridiculous with his thick, gold chain and his Timberlands, but Jiho likes it, how honest he is in what he wears, how well it suits him. “I’m quitting uni. I’m going to join a label, or a company, and do music full time.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t what Jiho expected to hear. Maybe something along the lines of, _we shouldn’t be friends anymore_ , or, _I don’t want to be with you_ , but this is much better. “That’s great, you always wanted to do that. You’ll be fucking fantastic in whatever you do.”

Minho glances up, surprised. “Yeah? You really think?”

“Of course, man.” Jiho comes over to wrap him up in a hug. “I know it’s been a bit shit for you, and you probably feel like you wasted your time here when you could have been doing music full time, but it meant a lot to me. I wouldn’t have been able to survive this long without you with me.” He’s glad for the hug, that Minho can’t see his face and everything he feels written on it. Minho hugs back just as tightly, and Jiho can feel the tension leave his body as his shoulders relax and he grips onto the back of Jiho’s shirt. 

“I was scared you were going to get angry and stop being my friend.”

Jiho laughs into Minho’s shoulder, face pressed into his shirt, which smells like two days of sweat covered with deodorant—a Minho classic. “I think, after everything, our friendship is going to survive no matter what. Okay? You don’t have to worry about losing me.”

As Minho pulls back, pulling himself together and looking like he might have been crying, Jiho thinks this time apart is going to be good for them. As badly as he wants to be with Minho, as badly as he wants to see him every day and talk about what they’re working on, he wants to see Minho succeed more. If Minho’s happy, then Jiho’s happy, too.


	9. whenever you're here, you know it feels right

The next time Jihoon calls him, it’s with only slightly better news than the last time. 

“We’ve got a lawyer,” he says, which should be good news, but is dour given the circumstances. “We’re going to file a lawsuit.”

“That’s good, you need a plan,” Minho says, waiting for the next part.

“But we’re breaking up. We haven’t been able to find another company to join, and it’s too much. I can’t lead them through this.”

“Hey.” Minho can hear the hurt in Jihoon’s voice and he tries to be as supportive as possible, knowing Jihoon’s always been there for him. He misses the Jihoon he knew from high school, who never let anything stop him from achieving what he wanted to achieve. “No one’s holding it against you. You’ve done the best you can, you’re still doing the best you can. That’s all you can do.”

They talk for hours, Jihoon letting out everything that’s been happening over the last three years, the pressure he’s under, how he wishes he could keep the group together but how he thinks it’s better they go their separate ways, and Minho listens. He can’t offer much advice, but he gets it when Jihoon says it’s nice just to talk, and Minho’s just glad he can be there for someone.

—

Minho’s already sent an email to the department heads, has called his parents to explain through their disappointment what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, and is halfway through packing up his stuff when Seungyoon knocks on his door.

“Let’s do something,” he says, like a call to adventure. If Minho was in a live action remake of an anime show, he would definitely say yes. As it stands, he’s not sure he wants to.

“Something like what?”

Seungyoon shrugs. “Paintball is cheap. I feel like a jerk, and I like you, so I want to make it up to you.”

It’s the “I like you” that has Minho agreeing, leaving the rest of his stuff unpacked and lying all over the floor. His roommate can just deal with it, what does Minho care, he’s leaving by the end of the day. He’s already sent recordings of his songs to several companies and labels, and now it’s just a matter of if any of them will accept him. Jiho’s words ring in his head as he follows Seungyoon out of the dorm, that he’s going to be great, that he’s going to succeed in whatever he does, that people are going to snatch him up. 

He realises on the subway ride to Gapyeong that it’s mostly been in silence from his end, and Seungyoon has been filling it up with casual chatter, and the more Minho pays attention the easier it is to join in, their easy camaraderie filling up the void the distraction of his thoughts created. He people-watches as the train rumbles on, a mother nursing her child as her other tugs on her arm for attention, an elderly couple looking through their phones and pointing out things to each other, teenagers kissing, so many things Minho’s normally too wrapped up in his own drama to notice. It’s nice being with Seungyoon, because he notices more, and he feels lighter for it. 

After the ride back, when they’re covered in paint and bruises and have another shared experience to add to what Minho hopes is something they can grow together, Seungyoon walks Minho to his dorm. 

“I shouldn’t be here, really,” he says, glancing around the hall as though someone might catch them. 

“I can’t believe you’re willing to risk your job for me,” Minho says, laughing at how uncomfortable Seungyoon looks.

“Well, I already—I was—at Jiho’s apartment. It’s only fair I risk my job for you, too.”

Minho tries not to feel any way about that, because Seungyoon did choose Jiho first, even if it’s not for the same reasons he’s choosing Minho now, but it excites him, in a way, sharing this with Jiho—whatever _this_ , between him and Seungyoon, is. They’ve broken the rules and hooked up with each other’s exes before, but Seungyoon isn’t exactly an ex if he’s still with Jiho, and now he’s—here, with Minho. Maybe he wouldn’t have to try that hard to convince them to be together, the three of them, and—

That’s what he wants, he realises with sudden clarity. He wants to be with both of them. It hits him so suddenly he loses focus on what’s happening around him, people moving in and out of their rooms and Seungyoon looking at him like he’s waiting for something.

“Would you excuse me?” Minho asks. “We should continue this, at a place and time I can kiss you goodbye, but would you—”

Seungyoon looks confused but nods. “Sure. I’ll text you.”

“Thanks.” He hurries down the hall, his feet taking him on instinct to the place he needs to be before the actual place he needs to be, and Kyung opens the door to his lab with a flourish of his arm, as if welcoming him to a dinner party. “I need your help,” Minho says, walking inside and feeling the chill of the air conditioner after all but running across campus.

Kyung gives him a once-over look. “I’d say you’re about a B-cup.”

“It’s Jiho. I’m having—feelings.”

Kyung stares at him like he’s being an idiot again, but that’s just how Kyung looks most of the time, being at least three times smarter than normal humans with normal human brains. “Go on,” he says, motioning to a chair while he sits in his own.

“I want to be with Jiho,” Minho says, and then it all comes flooding out, like water from a busted fire hydrant in the middle of a 1970s Bronx summer. “It’s just better when he’s around. I think about him all the time, you know. I just want the best for him, I want him to be happy. And it hurts to think that he’s probably not going to be happy with me, like, it physically hurts, because I don’t love him like he loves me.”

“Minho,” Kyung says, slowly, like he’s talking to a five year old, or like how he usually talks to Minho, “that’s what love is.”

“What?”

“Everything you just described—you fucking idiot, you are in love with him.”

Oh. Fuck.

“You mean—” Minho can’t find the words for a minute, blindsided by what Kyung’s saying. “—this awful feeling in my stomach like I’ve eaten bad sushi and the hollowness in my chest whenever I think about him not being happy is love?”

Kyung starts laughing, an all out, belly laugh that threatens to knock him out of his chair. When he finally surfaces from between his own knees, he wipes away tears, says, “You’re the stupidest motherfucker alive.”

“But, it hurts.”

“Yeah, stupid. Love hurts. Haven’t you heard that song?”

Minho chews on this for a minute, while Kyung erupts into giggles again. It makes sense in the same way it doesn’t make sense, that Minho could not know this entire time what he’s known all along. “I still think he can do better.”

Kyung stops laughing to roll his eyes. “Yes, he can do so much better than someone who doesnt even realise they’re in love with him. But he wants you, and—listen to me—” Kyung snaps his fingers to get Minho’s attention. “He _chose_ you. On purpose. That’s love, too.”

Minho can’t just accept this, it can’t be that easy. “If I love him, then why do I feel so bad?”

“You probably feel guilty about thinking you’re not in love with him. You want him to be happy, you don’t think he’ll be happy with you, but you want to be with him anyway, blah blah blah. God, you two are so boring.” Kyung pulls out his phone, promptly dropping Minho for whatever else is more interesting in Kyung’s brain, which, apparently, is anything. “Have you heard from Jinkyung lately? She said she wants to hang, but she hasn’t messaged, and I don’t want to be the desperate guy who messages first.”

Minho stands, feeling slightly more dazed than before he had this conversation. “Thanks,” he says, ignoring Kyung’s “Anytime, man,” and leaving with a buzzing mind and a heavy conscience. At least he knows what he has to do, and he’s going to do it.

—

Jiho’s hair is wet and he smells of the cheap cologne he likes but Minho thinks makes him smell like a carburetor and he looks like he’s actually slept and his apartment when he invites Minho in looks like he’s cleaned it, but even if he didn’t, even if he hadn’t showered in days and he had nice cologne and he hadn’t slept and his apartment was a mess, it would still be the place Minho wants to be right now. 

He takes Jiho’s hand and leads him over to the couch, because this is a sitting-on-the-couch-like-grown-ups conversation. “Are you okay, man?” Jiho asks, when Minho can’t get the words out for a full two minutes. “You’re my friend, but I worry about you sometimes.”

“That’s the thing.” Minho pauses, but then he charges on, knowing this can go only a few ways and if Jiho doesn’t want him anymore then that’s okay, because Minho needs to say it anyway. “I don’t want to be friends.”

“Oh.” Jiho’s face closes over and he takes his hand out of Minho’s grip. “Okay, I did see this coming, so.”

“No, i meant—” Minho tries to backtrack to the point in the conversation he could control, the full three seconds of it. “Fuck, I mean I don’t want to be just friends. I want us to be friends, but also more. Like how you want it to be, if you still want it to be that way, because I do too, I just didn’t know, I always did though, fuck, can I start again?”

Jiho’s expressions grow increasingly more worried the longer Minho babbles, but he nods. “You—what are you trying to say?”

“I like you. I really like you.”

“Thanks.”

“No, what I mean is—everything you said before, about wanting to be with me—I feel that, too, I just didn’t realise—I’m so stupid. I want to be with you. It just took me a while to figure that out. That I feel the same things about you that you feel about me.”

Jiho stares at him for long enough that Minho thinks that’s it, Jiho’s going to let him down, probably easy, which Minho doesn’t deserve, because he’s a nice guy, the nicest guy Minho knows, the best guy. “Yeah, you are stupid. And you’ve toyed with me a lot this year, although I think that I let myself get in too deep with you, and getting hurt was an inevitability.”

“It wouldn’t have been, if I’d figured out this sooner. I know it wasn’t just a hook-up to you, that it was feelings as well, but I had them, too. I just didn’t know what they were, not until like, half an hour ago.”

Jiho gives him a look that says he’s an idiot, but it’s a softer look than the ones Kyung gives him, it’s kinder and more fond. “What made you figure it out?”

“Kyung laid it down for me. He called me a ‘fucking idiot’.” As embarrassing as that is to admit, that Kyung of all people made him realise, at least Jiho isn’t going to think worse of Minho for it.

“Yeah, he’s pretty good at verbally kicking the truth into people.”

Minho only realises he’s bouncing his leg up and down anxiously when Jiho’s hand comes out to still it. Minho takes his hand again, pressing his fingers into Jiho’s palm. “So? Don’t leave me hanging here.”

Jiho smiles, and it’s the the best thing Minho’s seen all day, including the buckshot Seungyoon landed to someone’s face. “Of course I want to be with you. Haven’t you been listening? Kyung’s right.”

“About me being a fucking idiot? He’s right about me being in love with you.”

Jiho’s eyebrows shoot up and he levers himself up on his knee. “Oh, so it’s love now?” Minho shrugs, and that’s all it takes for Jiho to be on top of him, digging his fingers into Minho’s sides where he’s softest until Minho starts laughing, begging Jiho to stop, trapping Jiho with his legs around his hips, tipping him forward until they’re face to face.

“Yeah,” Minho says, running his hands through the long strands of blonde hair that fall into Jiho’s eyes, “it’s love, so deal with it.”

Jiho bites his lip like he’s trying not to let his smile overwhelm him. “Just so you know, we’re not going to have sex right away.”

“Okay, I can handle that,” Minho says, but his lie is given away by how he’s already kind of hard just wrestling with Jiho and at the promise of being with him in a way that is defined and not so precarious. 

“You have to earn it.” Jiho has such a heated look in his eyes that Minho groans out of frustration.

“You know that’s just making me want to fuck you even more.”

“Yeah,” Jiho says, with a grin, “I know.”

Minho lets his legs fall open and Jiho lowers himself down until his chin rests on Minho’s sternum, and they spend a while just looking at each other and being with each other, something they could have been doing this entire time if Minho hadn’t been such a dumbshit about it.

“I’m sorry,” Minho says, quietly. He doesn’t want to look at Jiho when he says, but he has to, just to make sure Jiho knows how much he means it. “I’m sorry that I hurt you like that. You mean so much to me, and you deserve better.”

“Yeah,” Jiho agrees, exhaling a sigh, “but I want _you_ , so you better buck up and sort your shit out before you end up hurting me again.”

“I will,” Minho says, and packs as much conviction as he can into it. “I’ll do better from now on.”

Jiho hums, and it reverberates through Minho’s chest, centering him, giving him a stable base to secure himself on. There’s probably things he still needs to do, like pack up his dorm, and secure some more gigs, and find a place to live, but right now, this is where he wants to be: with Jiho, and, for once, where he is and where he wants to be are the same.


	10. i saw you like i never did before

They’ve never woken up together before. That’s the first thought in Jiho’s mind when he rolls over to find Minho still asleep next to him. He’s tempted to wake him up just for the moment, but figures if this is going to be a regular thing, which Minho assured him it will, he’ll have other opportunities. Jiho rests on his elbows, brushing Minho’s hair off his forehead, and Minho cracks a bleary eye, says, “Watching me like a creep,” to which Jiho has no reply. Minho is nice to look at, Jiho can’t help himself—his eyelashes fanning across his cheeks, the corners of his lips lifting even without trying, his skin glowing even in the semi-darkness of the room. Jiho presses his nose into the skin of Minho’s shoulder, breathing in the sleep-sweet smell of him, feeling the warmth of his skin; he gets to do this now, with feeling, and he gets to savour it. 

Minho rolls over and traps Jiho underneath his weight, pressing him into the mattress, getting tangled up in the sheets, Minho’s foot sliding across Jiho’s calf. “It’s good to see you,” Minho says, quietly, and when he says it like it comes from the very depths of him, how can Jiho not feel anything for him? Jiho was staring at Minho two minutes ago but now he’s the one being stared at he feels his face heat up.

“I look like someone fell asleep on me and drooled on me all night,” Jiho says, pointedly. “You need to take a shower though, you’re covered in—” He touches the red spots on Minho’s chest and collarbones, only realising when he does that they’re welts and not paint. “What the hell?”

“Oh,” Minho says, looking down as if just noticing himself, “we went to paintball yesterday. Me and Seungyoon.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Jiho says, and Minho immediately tenses. “We don’t have to be exclusive. If you want to date Seungyoon you can.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Minho says, the tension leaving his body as he all but collapses on Jiho. “Not that I wouldn’t be exclusive for you, if you wanted.”

“I appreciate the effort, the whole three seconds of it.”

“Hey,” Minho says, without putting up much of a fight. It’s mostly into Jiho’s skin, and quickly turns into Minho pressing his lips to Jiho’s shoulder, his collarbone, his neck. Jiho tries not to get caught up in it, knowing it can only lead to one place if they let themselves. Minho keeps kissing him, reminiscent of the first time they got together, just necking and Minho kissing across Jiho’s skin before the first time they actually kissed, until Jiho can feel Minho’s tongue and he groans.

“Slow it down, dude. You haven’t earned that, yet.” He can feel Minho’s hard-on against his thigh, and it turns Jiho on just as much to be kissed and touched by Minho as it does Minho to kiss and touch him. 

Minho sighs and lifts his head up. “Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg.”

Jiho laughs, pushing his face away. “Go have a shower. I’ll go get coffee.” He extricates himself from under Minho, who only lies there for another minute before rolling off the bed and into the bathroom while Jiho pulls some clothes on. It takes him a few minutes to find his keys and his wallet and the socks he was wearing yesterday, and, on instinct, he walks into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Minho doesn’t notice for a few seconds, and Jiho’s too distracted staring at Minho holding himself up with one hand on the wall while with the other strokes himself to do what he came into the bathroom to do, which—he has already forgotten what that was. When Minho does glance up, it’s with a look like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, and stumbles over his words.

“Sorry, hyung, you just—you weren’t going to, and I—fuck, honestly? You turn me on so much, you really can’t blame me for this.”

The steam has started to cloud the glass and Jiho opens the door, leaning against it, feeling the heat and the water bouncing from the tile onto his ankles. “You can keep going,” he says, and Minho exhales, and keeps his eyes trained on Jiho as he starts stroking himself again. Jiho knows how he likes it when Jiho does it, but hasn’t seen Minho do it himself except for the video call they had, and he watches the idiosyncrasies of Minho touching himself—how he thumbs at the head of his cock, using come and water as lube, how fast he strokes, how his pupils dilate and his hair hangs, wet, in his eyes. The only thing Jiho wants more than to touch him is to see him prove how much he wants Jiho. 

Minho’s close, Jiho can tell by the noises he makes, sounds like he’s wringing them out of himself, like it’s so pleasurable he’s in pain. He has hardly any stamina but Jiho still fantasizes about Minho fucking him for as long as he can, so good that he wouldn’t be able to think about anyone else, Minho’s words coming back to him as Minho leans more into the wall of the shower. Minho’s cock is as nice to look at as he is; thick and flushed, veins prominent, cut. They’d shared things, of course, even before they started fucking—what they liked, who they’d fucked the night before, the weird things that got them hard sometimes, how big they were, how they looked—but it didn’t prepare Jiho for how right Minho’s cock felt in his hand, how good he tasted, how well they worked together to bring each other off. That first time in the car was messy, but as soon as they moved to Jiho’s bed it got better; they could take up space, play with each other, figure out how to move. Jiho could see Minho—all of him—and stretch out beside him, and touch him. 

He can do that again, now, of course, but—he needs to know just how serious Minho is before he can commit to anything. If Minho’s just going to run when it gets too serious for him, or if he just wants to fuck Jiho and then run, Jiho can’t handle that. He’s waited too long for Minho to get his act together to waste time on something meaningless. In the meantime, he watches Minho come onto the tiles at his feet, his face screwed up in pleasure, breathing hard, and then he slips out of the bathroom before Minho has a chance to watch him go.

—

Being on the stage in front of a tv audience is exactly as exhilarating and nerve-wracking as Jiho imagined. It’s not like performing in a club, where there is room for mistakes; here, he just has one chance to prove how good he is, how much he deserves to be on stage and rapping to this kind of crowd. 

They don’t know him, but the crowd goes off at the end, cheering for both him and Woosung, and he feels buoyed by it, floating on the atmosphere and how good it feels to be doing what he loves. He wishes Minho were here, but it’s just as good knowing Minho is back at his apartment, probably stuffed full of food from the Chinese place down the road, waiting for Jiho to get home. He texts Minho as he’s waiting backstage, which starts a back and forth that happens in between Jiho meeting people he’s dreamed about meeting since he knew who they were, including Bobby, who is every bit as charming and funny as Woosung made him out to be.

When he does get home, the boxes of Minho’s stuff lying around the apartment, since he had to move them but didn’t want to go back to his parents’ right away and he hasn’t found somewhere else to live, have been moved away, and the apartment is lit only by candles. The smell of a home-cooked meal greets him before the sight of Minho passed out on the couch does, and both of these things are so sweet Jiho doesn’t want to interrupt the scene. He takes a seat by the table and starts eating, because Minho cooked it, it’s still warm, and Jiho would hate it to go to waste. 

Minho wakes up halfway through, rubbing his eyes as if he’s been sleeping all day. “Hyung, you’re back. How long was I asleep?”

“I don’t know,” Jiho says, huffing out a laugh. “I wasn’t here when you dozed off.”

Minho looks like he’s about to roll over and go back to sleep when he suddenly perks up. “How was it? Tell me all about it. How nervous were you? I bet you were amazing, I can’t wait to see it.”

Jiho waits until Minho’s finished to talk about it, and it’s nice, as nice a thing as he could ask for, to be able to come home and tell someone about his day—tell Minho about his day. He doesn’t want to rush into anything but if Minho’s willing to stay for a while, Jiho will keep him around. Minho starts eating while Jiho’s talking, making the appropriate comments and awed noises at what Jiho says, and turning Jiho’s good mood into something even better.

“Joonkyung-hyung, Dok2, he uh.” Jiho can’t find the words for a moment. “He told me he might sign me up to Illionaire, if I want to.”

Minho looks shocked for a second, before he bursts out with, “That’s freaking amazing. You said yes immediately, right?”

“I said I’d consider it if they wanted you too.”

Minho stares at him. “Hyung, who gives a shit about me? That’s a nice sentiment and I’m grateful, but you need to do what’s best for you.”

Jiho feels put out by that, a little annoyed at how Minho talks about himself. “ _I_ care about you. I want you to succeed just as much as I want to succeed myself.”

“Still,” Minho says, still eating, “you should go for it. If they sign me too, then they sign me, but you deserve this deal.” 

There it is again, the question of deserving. He doesn’t know what he does and doesn’t deserve, and he wonders what the danger is in taking other people’s word for it.

He almost doesn’t want to broach the subject, but he needs to know where Minho stands. “Have you found a place yet?”

“Not yet, I need to save up some money first. Why, do you want me out that badly?” Minho grins and plays with his foot under the table—he hasn’t even had any shots. Jiho might not get over that he doesn’t need to wait for Minho to come onto him because he’s been drinking, that Minho will just do it because he feels for Jiho, he’s in love with Jiho, at least not anytime soon.

“You can stay here for a while, I’m not going to kick you out.”

“‘Oma’o,” Minho says, through a mouthful of beef. They eat in silence, but after a few minutes Minho swallows and puts down his chopsticks. “You know I’m not just fucking around with you, right?”

Jiho stops with a piece of chicken halfway through his mouth. “I didn’t know for sure, but go on.”

“We’re in this, together. _I’m_ in this, with you. No matter if you want me to stay in your apartment or not, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be and nowhere else I’m going to be but with you.” He reaches over the table to take Jiho’s face in his hands, and they’re warm and comforting and smell like honey. “I choose you. On purpose.”

It’s unbelievable what kind of effect those five words have on Jiho—he can’t breathe like he’s having an asthma attack and he thinks his heart is hurting, but in a good way, in the kind of way he doesn’t want to stop. He knows, pragmatically, that these feelings might not last forever, but he feels them now, and both he and Minho are here, loving each other, choosing each other. He waits until they’ve put the leftovers away before he takes Minho’s hand and pulls him into bed. 

“Are you sure?” Minho asks, after Jiho tries to kiss him breathless. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything.”

Jiho laughs at the thought of Minho pressuring anybody into doing something they don’t want to do, when more than anything he just wants people to like being around him. Even before, when Seungyoon was sleeping in Jiho’s bed and Minho was there, he didn’t pressure Jiho—he was just expressing himself in the only way he knew how, and Jiho knew better than to be pressured. 

“I want to,” Jiho says, giving into the feeling of Minho’s hands on his skin, pushed under his hoodie, warm and sure at Jiho’s insistence. “Let me touch you, I want to feel you.”

They lose their clothes and fall into each other, Jiho learning for the first time the depth and strength of what Minho has to offer, his body strong and his will steady. More than anything, he makes Jiho feel alive, and safe, and cared for, whether he’s making dinner for the both of them or kissing Jiho as he pushes in, cleaning up the dishes or taking care of Jiho after, wiping him down, pulling him close, letting him ride out the aftershocks of his orgasm in Minho’s arms. 

It might be the best day of Jiho’s life, sharing the stage with Woosung and then sharing his bed with Minho, closer to him and his dreams than he’s ever been before. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be, either.

—

They’re doing it again, Jiho staring at Minho staring at Seungyoon. The difference now is that Jiho and Minho are in love, and Minho went out of his way to clean Jiho’s apartment that morning, and looked over Jiho’s last three essays, and wrote him a verse that was just all the things he wanted to do to Jiho’s body. Minho’s allowed to look at Seungyoon, because he wants to. The day is lovely and Jiho’s only sweating slightly under the sun, but Minho looks gorgeous leaning back on his hands in the grass, soaking up the rays.

“If that’s something you want,” Jiho continues. “It doesn’t have to be serious, and you don’t have to be with me. I’m still technically your student and I don’t want you to lose your job. But Minho’s dropped out, and he wants to be with you, so if you’re up for it, if you’re not too sore about losing Jiao anymore, you have my blessing.”

Seungyoon’s expression grows fonder the more Jiho talks, until by the end of it’s he’s smiling. “Funny story, I’m actually leaving. I was offered another job, at a different university. I won’t be coming back next semester.”

“Great!” Minho says, looking between them. “Let’s have ourselves a ménage à trois.”

Jiho claps a hand over Minho’s mouth, even while Seungyoon laughs. “The offer’s there, and if you want to take us up on it, we’d like that.”

“I do,” Seungyoon says, and Minho preemptively goes to Jiho for a high-five, “but I am still hung up on Jiao. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get involved with anyone else right now. And I like you both, a lot, it’s just that—I need to be by myself for a while. It’s no good getting involved with people I like if I’m just going to repeat the same mistakes I made in my last relationship.”

Jiho nods, and when Seungyoon looks at him, his eyes are sad, even though he’s smiling. “It’s okay, you can take your time.”

“Thank you.”

“But you have until next week,” Minho says, and Jiho grabs his wrist and pulls until Minho collapses onto the grass. 

“Don’t mind him,” Jiho says to Seungyoon, “I’ve just forgotten to walk him today.”

Minho rolls over on top of Jiho and pins him to the grass, and it turns into something of a wrestle with their legs intertwined and Minho’s hands around Jiho’s wrists, Jiho laughing and Minho huffing out annoyed grunts. Maybe they shouldn’t do this outside in view of people, but Seungyoon needs to know what he’s in for. “What am I, your dog? You gonna feed me treaties? Put me on a leash and take me for walkies?”

“Only if you’re a good boy,” Jiho says, laughing at the face Minho makes, like he’s never been more insulted in his life, but just this morning Kyung told them Minho’s downright disgusting when he’s in love and if they could please refrain from looking at each other Kyung wouldn’t have to kick them out of his lab. Jiho lets Minho starfish on him, enjoying the contact with his eyes closed and the little huffs of breath Minho makes into his neck as he describes all of the worst things about having a pet, until a shadow blocks the sun and he opens them again. 

“I should go,” Seungyoon says, brushing grass off of him, and Minho sits up again. He reaches for Seungyoon’s hand and kisses the back of it, while his other hand holds onto Jiho’s, and Seungyoon laughs again, his whole face lighting up with it. “Okay, I’m really going to go. I’ll see you both around.”

As soon as he’s gone Minho lies on the grass next to Jiho, and it’s a fitting end to the last three weeks, like closing a chapter on their lives just to start a new one, the sun on them and the two of them together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thats it folks, thanks for reading !


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